Firewall

by Henning Mankell

  He slipped out through the garage to avoid reporters. The wind was very strong now. He had to hunch over and run directly into it to get to his car. When he turned the key nothing happened. He tried again, several times, but the engine was completely dead.

  He undid his seat belt and left the car without bothering to lock the door. On his way back to Mariagatan he remembered the book he was supposed to pick up. But it would have to wait. Everything would have to wait. Right now all he wanted to do was to sleep.

  When he woke, it was as if he had come running out of a dream at full tilt. He had been in the middle of a press conference, but this one had been held at Hökberg's house. Wallander had not been able to answer a single question. Then he had suddenly spotted his father at the very back of the room. He seemed undisturbed by the television cameras and was calmly painting his favourite autumn landscape.

  That was the point at which Wallander woke up. He lay in bed, listening for sounds. The wind blew against the window. He turned his head. The clock on his bedside table read 9.30 p.m. He had been sleeping for almost seven hours. He tried to swallow. His throat was still swollen and sore. But his temperature had gone down. He felt sure that Hökberg was still on the run. Someone would have called him. He got up and went into the kitchen. There was the reminder to buy soap. He added to the list the book he had to pick up. Then he made some tea. He looked in vain for a lemon. There were some old tomatoes and a half-rotten cucumber in the vegetable bin, which he threw out. When the tea was ready, he carried the cup into the living room.

  He reached for the phone and called the station. The only person he managed to reach was Hansson.

  "How is it going?"

  Hansson sounded tired when he answered.

  "She's disappeared without a trace."

  "Not a single sighting?"

  "No-one, nothing. The national chief of police has called and expressed his displeasure."

  "I don't doubt it. But I suggest we ignore him for the moment."

  "I heard you're sick."

  "I'll be fine tomorrow."

  Hansson told him how the investigation was proceeding. Wallander had no objections to the way things were being handled. They had declared a regional search for Hökberg and had alerted the rest of the force in case they had to operate nationally. Hansson said he would call if there were significant developments.

  Wallander put on a CD of Verdi's La Traviata. He lay on the sofa and closed his eyes. He thought about Persson and about her mother, the girl's violent outburst and her puzzlingly indifferent gaze. Then the phone rang. Wallander sat up and turned the music down.

  "Kurt?"

  He recognised the voice immediately. It was Sten Widén, one of Wallander's few close friends and probably the oldest.

  "It's been a while."

  "It's always been a while when we talk to each other. How are you doing? When I tried to reach you at the station someone said you were sick."

  "I have a sore throat. It's nothing."

  "It would be nice to see you."

  "Now is not the best time. Have you seen the news?"

  "I never watch the news or read a paper. Apart from the racing sections."

  "Someone managed to escape from custody. I have to find her. Then we can meet."

  "I wanted to say goodbye."

  Wallander felt something go tight in his stomach. Was Sten sick? Had his alcohol abuse finally got to his liver?

  "Why? Why do you need to say goodbye?"

  "I'm selling my place and taking off."

  The last few years Widén had talked about leaving. The stud he had inherited from his father had stopped being profitable many years ago. Wallander had listened, on countless occasions, to his dreams of starting a new life but he had never taken Widén's ideas seriously, just as he never took his own dreams seriously. That had apparently been a mistake. When Sten was drunk, as he often was, he tended to exaggerate. But now he seemed sober and full of energy. The normal slowness of his speech was gone.

  "Is this for real?"

  "Yes. I'm going."

  "Where to?"

  "I haven't decided yet."

  Wallander was no longer tensing up his stomach, but he felt envy instead. Sten Widén's dreams had turned out to have more life in them than his own.

  "I'll come as soon as I can. Maybe in a few days."

  "I'll be here."

  Wallander sat deep in thought for a long time. He couldn't hide from his envy. His dreams of leaving behind his work as a police officer felt extremely remote. What Widén was doing now, Wallander could never do.

  He drank his tea and then carried the cup into the kitchen. The thermometer outside the window read one degree above freezing. It was cold for the beginning of October.

  He walked back to the sofa. The music was still playing softly. He reached for the remote control. The power went out.

  At first he thought a fuse had blown, but after feeling his way over to the window he saw that even the street lamps had gone out. He went back to the sofa and waited.

  A large part of Skåne lay in darkness.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Olle Andersson was asleep when the phone rang.

  He tried the bedside lamp, but it wouldn't go on. That told him what the call was about. He turned on the strong flashlight he always kept beside his bed and lifted the receiver. As he had guessed, the call was from the Sydkraft main office, staffed round the clock. It was Rune Ågren. Andersson had already known that Ågren was the one on duty that night, October 8. He was from Malmö and had worked for various utility companies for more than 30 years. He was due to retire next year. He got straight to the point.

  "Twenty-five per cent of Skåne is without power."

  Andersson was surprised. There had been gusting winds these past few days, but there had been nothing close to a storm.

  "The devil only knows what happened," Ågren said. "But it's the Ystad power substation that's been affected. You'd better get dressed and go down there to take a look."

  Andersson knew it was urgent. In the complicated network that conveyed electricity to cities and houses across the countryside, the Ystad power substation was one of the central points of connection. If anything happened to it, most of Skåne would be affected one way or another. Someone was always responsible for making sure that didn't happen. This week Andersson was on call for the Ystad area.

  It took him 19 minutes to reach the substation. The area was completely dark. Every time the power went out and he was out looking for the problem, he was struck by the same thought: that as little as a hundred years ago this impenetrable darkness had been the norm. The advent of electricity had changed everything. No-one now living could remember what life had been like before electricity. But he would also think about how vulnerable society had become. In the worst-case scenario, one single snag in the power grid could plunge a third of the country into darkness.

  "I'm here," he told Ågren on his radio transmitter.

  "Hurry up, then."

  The power substation stood in a field. It was surrounded by barbed-wire fencing. At regular intervals there were "No Trespassing" and "Danger! High Voltage" signs. He hunched over against the wind, a set of keys in his hand and wearing a pair of protective glasses he had constructed himself with two small powerful flashlights attached to the frames. He found the right keys and stopped in front of the gates. They were open. He looked around. There was no car, no sign of anyone else. He took up his radio again and called Ågren.

  "The gates have been busted open," he said.

  Ågren had difficulty hearing him because of the wind. Andersson had to repeat himself.

  "It doesn't look as though anyone's here. I'm going in."

  The gates had been broken open before, and it was always reported to the police. Sometimes the police managed to catch the guilty party, usually drunken teenagers on a vandalism kick. But they had also considered the possibility of someone bent on sabotaging the grid. In fact, Andersson had b
een in a meeting only this last September where one of the Sydkraft safety engineers had proposed the installation of a whole new set of security measures.

  He turned his head. Since he had his hand-held torch too, three spots of light travelled across the metal frame of the substation. A little grey building set deep among the steel towers was the heart of the structure. It housed the transformers. It had a thick steel door that could be opened only with two different keys, or by the use of powerful explosives. Andersson had marked the various keys on his chain with coloured tape. The red key opened the gates, the yellow and blue were for the steel door of the transformer building. He looked around. There was no-one there. The only thing he heard was the wind. He started walking but stopped after only a few steps. Something had caught his attention. He looked around again. Was there anyone behind him? He could hear Ågren's raspy voice coming from the radio dangling from his jacket. He didn't bother to answer. What was it that had made him stop? There was nothing there in the darkness, at least nothing that he could see. There was, however, a bad smell, but that probably came from the fields, he thought. The farmer must have fertilised them recently. He continued towards the transformer building. The bad smell lingered. Then he stopped short. The steel door was ajar. He took a few steps back and clutched the radio.

  "The door's open," he said. "Can you hear me?"

  "I hear you. What do you mean the door is open?"

  "Just what I said."

  "Is anyone there?"

  "I don't know. It doesn't look as if it's been forced."

  "But then how could it be open?"

  "I don't know."

  The radio was quiet. Andersson felt very alone.

  Ågren spoke up. "Do you mean the door is unlocked?"

  "That's what it looks like to me. And there's a strange smell."

  "You'll have to go in and see what it is. There's a lot of pressure from above right now to get this thing cleared up. The bosses keep calling and asking what the hell happened."

  Andersson took a deep breath and walked all the way up to the door, opened it further and directed his flashlight inside. At first he didn't know what he was looking at. The stench was overwhelming. Slowly it dawned on him what had happened. The power had gone out in Skåne this October evening because a burned corpse lay among the power lines. A person had caused this power cut.

  He stumbled back out of the building and called for Ågren to come in.

  "There's a corpse in the transformer building."

  A few seconds went by before Ågren replied. "Can you repeat that?"

  "There's a burned body in there. A person has short-circuited the entire region."

  "Are you serious?"

  "You heard me. Something must have gone wrong with the relay safety."

  "We'll call the police. You stay where you are. We'll try to reconnect the power grid to bypass you."

  The radio went dead. Andersson realised he was shaking. He couldn't believe what had happened. What could drive a person to go down to a power substation and kill themselves with high-voltage electrical current? It was like choosing execution by the electric chair. He felt sick to his stomach and tried to keep himself from throwing up by walking back to the car.

  The wind was still gusting and it had started to rain.

  The police in Ystad were alerted shortly after midnight. The officer who took the call from Sydkraft wrote down the information and made a quick decision. Since a death was involved he called Hansson, the senior officer on duty. He said he'd drive out right away. He had a candle by the phone. He knew Martinsson's number by heart. It took Martinsson a while to answer. He was sound asleep and had no idea that the power was off. He listened to what Hansson had to say and knew it was a serious matter. When the conversation was over he called Wallander.

  Wallander had fallen asleep on the sofa while he had been waiting for the power to come back on. When the phone rang and woke him up it was still dark. He knocked the phone down on the floor as he was reaching for the receiver.

  "It's Martinsson. Hansson just called me."

  Wallander sensed that something serious had happened. He held his breath.

  "A body has been found on one of Sydkraft's stations outside Ystad."

  "Is that why there's no power?"

  "I don't know. But I thought you should be notified, even if you are sick."

  Wallander swallowed. His throat was still sore, but his temperature was normal.

  "My car has broken down," he said. "You'll have to pick me up."

  "I'll be there in ten minutes."

  "Make that five," Wallander said. "If it's true, the whole region is without power."

  He got dressed in the dark and went down to wait on the street. It was raining. Martinsson was there in seven minutes. They drove through the dark city. Hansson was waiting by one of the roundabouts on the outskirts of town.

  "It's one of the substations north of the waste-management plant," Martinsson said.

  Wallander knew where it was. He had been on a walk once in a forest close by, when Baiba had been visiting.

  "What happened exactly?"

  "I don't know any details. Sydkraft made an emergency call claiming to have found a dead body out there when they were investigating the power cut."

  "Is it affecting a large area?"

  "According to Hansson a quarter of Skåne is without power."

  Wallander looked at him in disbelief. Blackouts were rarely so extensive. It happened occasionally after a big winter storm. It had happened after the hurricane in the autumn of 1996. But not when the weather was like this.

  They turned off the main road. It was raining more heavily now. Martinsson's windscreen wipers were on full. Wallander regretted not having brought his raincoat or the boots that he kept in the back of the car now stuck down at the station.

  Hansson stopped his car. Flashlights were on in the dark. Wallander saw a man in overalls who was gesturing for them to follow him.

  "This is a high-voltage station," Martinsson said. "It won't be a pretty sight."

  They stepped out into the rain. The wind was stronger here in the open fields. The man who came towards them was clearly shaken. Wallander no longer had any doubts that something serious had occurred.

  "In there," the man said and pointed behind him.

  Wallander went ahead. The rain whipped him in the face and made it hard to see. Martinsson and Hansson were somewhere behind him. Their shaken guide was walking to one side.

  "In there," he repeated, when they stopped in front of the transformer building.

  "Is anything still live in there?" Wallander asked. "I mean the power lines."

  "Nothing. Not any more."

  Wallander took Martinsson's torch and went in. He could smell it now, the stench of scorched human flesh. It was a smell he had never been able to get used to, although he had been exposed to it on frequent occasions when houses burned down and people were trapped inside. Hansson will probably be sick, Wallander thought, vaguely. He can't take the smell of burned bodies.

  The corpse was completely blackened and sooty. The face was gone. It was trapped in a mess of lines, switches and circuit breakers.