Firewall

by Henning Mankell

  Wallander moved aside so that Martinsson could take a look.

  "Oh Christ," Martinsson groaned.

  Wallander called out to Hansson to get Nyberg on the line and organise the back-up they needed.

  "And tell them to bring a generator," he said. "We'll need it to get some light in here."

  He turned back to Martinsson.

  "What's the guy's name, the one who discovered the body?"

  "Olle Andersson."

  "What was he doing here?"

  "Sydkraft had sent him down to take a look. They always have trained men on call in case of emergencies."

  "Have a chat with him. See if you can get some specifics on the sequence of events from him. And don't walk around too much in here or Nyberg will be on your case."

  Martinsson took Andersson with him to one of the cars. Wallander was left alone. He crouched down and shone his torch on the body. Nothing remained of the clothes. It was like looking at a mummy, or a body that had been discovered in a bog after a thousand years. But this was a twentieth-century substation. He tried to think back to when the power had been cut off. That had been some time around 11 p.m. Now it was almost 1 a.m. If the body had caused the power cut then this happened about two hours ago.

  Wallander got up and let his torch rest on the floor. What had happened here? A person goes to a remote power substation and causes a major blackout by killing him or herself. Wallander made a face. That made no sense. The questions were starting to pile up. He bent down to pick up the torch. The only thing to do was to wait for Nyberg.

  At the same time something was bothering him. He let the beam of light from the torch travel over the blackened remains. He didn't know what was causing this feeling, but it was as if he were sensing something that was no longer there. But that had been there.

  He walked out of the building and examined the reinforced steel door. He could see no signs of a forced entry. There were two impressive locks. Wallander started walking back the way he had come. He tried to retrace his steps so that he wouldn't interfere with any tracks that might also be there. At the gates he examined the lock. It had been forced open. What did that mean? The gates had been clumsily cut open, but a reinforced steel door had posed no problem?

  Martinsson was in Andersson's car. Hansson was making phone calls from his own car. Wallander tried to shake the rain off his coat and got into Martinsson's car. The engine was running and the windscreen wipers were still on high. He turned up the heat. His throat ached. He turned the radio on to get the latest news. He listened and began to realise the enormity of what was happening.

  A quarter of Skåne was without power. It was dark from Trelleborg to Kristianstad. The hospitals were using their emergency generators, but otherwise the power cut was total. A Sydkraft executive had been reached and had said that the problem had been located. He was expecting the power in most areas to be restored in half an hour.

  There won't be any power coming from here in half an hour, that's for sure, Wallander thought. He wondered if the executive really knew what had happened.

  I have to let Lisa Holgersson know about this, he thought. He reached for Martinsson's mobile phone and dialled her number. It took a while for her to answer.

  "Wallander here. Have you noticed the power's off?"

  "A blackout? I was sleeping."

  Wallander explained the situation. She became fully alert.

  "Do you want me to come down?"

  "I think you should get in touch with Sydkraft and tell them that their power problem now also involves a police investigation."

  "What do you think has happened? Is it a suicide?"

  "I can't tell. I don't know."

  "What about sabotage? A terrorist act?"

  "I don't think we can answer that question yet either. In fact, we can't rule out any of these things."

  "I'll call Sydkraft. Keep me posted."

  Wallander hung up. Hansson came running through the rain over to the car. Wallander opened the door.

  "Nyberg is on his way. How did things look in there?"

  "Pretty bad. There was nothing left, not even a face."

  Hansson didn't answer. He ran through the rain, back to his own car.

  Twenty minutes later Wallander saw the lights of Nyberg's car appear in the rear-view mirror. Wallander stepped out of the car and greeted him. Nyberg looked tired.

  "What is it that's happened exactly? I couldn't get one coherent sentence out of Hansson."

  "We have a dead body in there. Burned to a crisp. Nothing left."

  Nyberg looked around. "That's what usually happens when high-voltage transformers are involved. Is that why the power's out?"

  "Seems so."

  "Does that mean half of Skåne will be waiting for me to finish?"

  "We're not going to take that into consideration. I think they're working on restoring the power anyway, working their way around this substation."

  "We live in a vulnerable society," Nyberg said, and immediately started instructing his crew of technicians.

  Erik Hökberg said the same thing, Wallander thought. We live in a vulnerable society. His computers will have been shut off by this, if he sits up with them at night trying to make more money.

  Nyberg worked quickly and efficiently. Soon all the spotlights were up and running, connected to a noisy generator. Martinsson and Wallander went back to the car. Martinsson flipped through his notes.

  "Andersson was called by a central command employee called Ågren. They had pinpointed the blackout to this substation. Andersson lives in Svarte. It took him 20 minutes to get here. He found that the outside gates had been tampered with, but that the inner steel door was simply unlocked. When he looked in he saw what had happened."

  "Did he see anything else?"

  "There was no-one here when he arrived and he didn't see anyone walking around."

  Wallander thought for a moment. "We have to get to the bottom of this business of the keys," he said.

  Andersson was talking with Ågren on the radio when Wallander got into his car. He immediately finished the conversation.

  "I understand that you're pretty shaken up by this," Wallander said.

  "I've never seen anything so terrible. What happened exactly?"

  "We don't know that yet. Now, when you arrived on the scene the gates had been forced open, but the steel door had been opened without any visible sign of its being forced. How do you explain that?"

  "I can't."

  "Who else has a copy of these keys?"

  "Only another repairman called Moberg. He lives in Ystad. And the main office, of course. There the security is always very tight."

  "But someone did unlock the steel door?"

  "That's what it looks like."

  "I take it that these keys can't be copied."

  "The locks are made in the United States. They're supposed to be impossible to force."

  "What's Moberg's first name?"

  "Lars."

  "Is it possible that someone forgot to lock the door?"

  Andersson shook his head. "That would be grounds for instant dismissal. The security is very thorough. If anything, it has got tighter in the past few years."

  Wallander had no other questions for the moment. "I'd like you to remain here for now," he said, "in case any other puzzles come up. I'd also like you to call Moberg and ask him if he still has his keys for the steel door."

  Wallander got out of the car. The rain was tailing off. The conversation with Andersson had increased his anxiety. It was just possible that someone wanting to commit suicide had come out here to this substation, but the facts were starting to line up against this hypothesis. Among other things was the fact that the steel door had been opened with keys. Wallander knew where this thought was leading: murder. The victim had then been disposed of in the power lines to destroy the clues.

  Wallander walked into the beam of the spotlights. The photographer had just finished taking his pictures and video clips. N
yberg was kneeling by the body. He muttered irritably when Wallander walked into his light.

  "What's your take on this?"

  "That it's taking the pathologist an awfully long time to get out here. I want to move the body to see if there's anything behind it."

  "I mean your take on what could have happened."

  Nyberg thought for a while. "It's a macabre way to commit suicide. If it's murder, it's exceptionally brutal. It would be the equivalent of executing your victim in the electric chair."

  That's right, Wallander thought. That leads us to the possibility that it's an act of revenge. Taking revenge through executing someone in a very special kind of electric chair.

  Nyberg went on with his work. One of his technicians had started to scout the area between the building and the gates. The pathologist arrived, a woman Wallander had met before. Her name was Susann Bexell and she was a woman of few words. She got down to business at once. Nyberg got his thermos from his bag and had a cup of coffee. He offered Wallander some. Wallander decided to accept. They would get no more sleep that night anyway. Martinsson turned up at their side, wet and stiff. Wallander passed him his cup of coffee.

  "They're beginning to restore power," Martinsson said. "Parts of Ystad already have some light. I have no idea how they managed to do that."

  "Has Andersson spoken to his colleague Moberg about the keys?"

  Martinsson walked off to find out. Wallander saw that Hansson was sitting rigidly behind his steering wheel. He walked over and told Hansson to return to the station. Most of Ystad was still dark, after all, and he would be of more use there than here. Hansson nodded gratefully and drove away. Wallander walked over to the pathologist.

  "Have you learned anything about him?"

  Susann Bexell looked up.

  "Just enough to tell you that this is a woman."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes, but I'm not going to answer any other questions for now."

  "Just one more. Was she dead when she got here, or was it the power that killed her?"

  "I don't know that yet."

  Wallander turned round, lost in thought. He had been assuming the victim was a man.

  At that moment the technician, searching between the gates, came to Nyberg with something in his hand. Wallander joined them. It was a woman's handbag. Wallander stared at it. At first he thought he was making a mistake. Then he knew he had seen it before. More specifically, yesterday.

  "I found it to the north by the fence," said the technician, whose name was Ek.

  "Is the body in there a woman?" Nyberg asked, in surprise.

  "Not only that," Wallander said. "Now we know who she is."

  The handbag had been on a desk inside the interrogation room. It had a clasp that looked like an oak leaf. There was no mistaking it.

  "This bag belongs to Sonja Hökberg," he said. "She's the one in there."

  It was 2.10 a.m. The rain came on more heavily.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The power in Ystad was restored shortly after 3 a.m. At that time Wallander was still working with the technicians at the substation. Hansson called from the police station and told him the news. Wallander could see lights come on in the distance on the outside of a barn.

  The pathologist had finished her work, the body had been removed and Nyberg had been able to continue his forensic investigation. He had asked Andersson to explain the complicated network of lines and switches inside the transformer building. Outside, his technicians worked to find any traces that might have been left behind. The rain was making for difficult working conditions. Martinsson slipped in the mud and bruised his elbow. Wallander was shivering with cold and longed for his Wellingtons.

  Soon after the power was restored in Ystad, Wallander took Martinsson with him to one of the police cars. There they mapped out the information they had gathered so far. Hökberg had escaped from the police station about 13 hours earlier. She could have made it to the substation on foot, but neither Wallander nor Martinsson thought it plausible. It was, after all, 3 kilometres to Ystad.

  "Someone would have seen her," Martinsson said. "Our cars were out looking for her."

  "Double-check to see if a patrol car came this way."

  "What's the alternative?"

  "That someone gave her a lift. Someone who left her and drove off."

  They both knew what that implied. The question of how Hökberg had died was still the most pressing. Did she commit suicide or was she murdered?

  "The keys," Wallander said. "The gates were forced, but not the door. Why?"

  They searched for a rational explanation.

  "We need a list of anyone who could possibly have had access to the keys," Wallander said. "I want every key holder accounted for, and what they were doing last night."

  "I have trouble getting this to hang together," Martinsson said. "Hökberg commits murder. Then she gets murdered herself? Suicide makes more sense."

  Wallander didn't answer. There were a number of thoughts in his head, but they weren't connecting with each other. He went over and over the one and only conversation he had had with Hökberg.

  "You talked to her first," Wallander said. "What was your impression of her?"

  "Same as yours. That she felt no remorse, and might just as well have killed an insect as an old taxi driver."

  "That doesn't suggest suicide to me. Why would she kill herself if she felt no remorse?"

  Martinsson turned off the windscreen wipers. They could see Andersson waiting in his car and beyond him Nyberg was helping to move a spotlight. His movements were brusque. Wallander could tell that he was both angry and impatient.

  "Well, is there anything that suggests it was murder?"

  "No," Wallander said. "There's nothing to indicate either possibility, therefore we have to keep them both open. But I think we can rule out accidental death."

  After a while Wallander asked Martinsson to make sure the investigative team was ready to meet at 8 a.m. Then he got out of the car. The rain had stopped. He felt how tired he was, and how cold. His throat ached. He walked over to Nyberg, who was wrapping up work in the transformer building.

  "Have you found anything?"

  "No."

  "Does Andersson have anything to say?"

  "About what? Forensic investigations?"

  Wallander silently counted to ten before going on. Nyberg was in a very bad mood. Saying the wrong thing would make him impossible to talk to.

  "He can't determine what happened," Nyberg said after a while. "The body caused the power break, but whether it was a dead body or a living person who was thrown down there only the pathologist can say. And she may not be able to tell either."

  Wallander nodded. He looked down at his watch. It was 3.30 a.m. There was no point in staying any longer.