Firewall

by Henning Mankell

  "What did I say?"

  "That you'd leave if they found you guilty."

  "I don't know. I don't think I have the energy to think about it right now."

  Wallander didn't want to talk more about it and Martinsson knew to leave him alone. They parked outside 10 Apelbergsgatan. A woman was waiting for them.

  "That must be Marianne Falk," Martinsson said. "She obviously kept her name after the divorce."

  Martinsson was about to open the car door when Wallander stopped him.

  "Does she know what's happened? About the body being missing?"

  "Someone rang her."

  They got out. The woman standing there in the wind was very well dressed. She was tall and slender and reminded Wallander vaguely of Mona. They said hello. Wallander could tell that she was angry and upset. He was immediately alert.

  "Have they found the body? How can things like this happen?"

  Wallander let Martinsson answer. "It's very unfortunate, of course."

  "Unfortunate? It's unacceptable. What do we have a police force for anyway?"

  "There's a question," Wallander said. "But I think we should deal with that another time."

  They went into the building and went upstairs. Wallander was uneasy. Had he left anything behind last night?

  Marianne Falk walked ahead of them. When she came to the top landing she stopped, pointing to the door. Martinsson was right behind her. Wallander pushed him aside. Then he saw. The door to the flat was wide open. The locks he had taken so much trouble with, trying to leave no trace of his visit, had been broken with something like a crowbar. Wallander listened for sounds. Martinsson was beside him. Neither of them was carrying a weapon. Wallander hesitated. He signalled them to go down to the floor below.

  "There could be someone in there," he whispered. "We had better get some back-up."

  Martinsson got out his phone.

  "I want you to wait in your car," Wallander told Mrs Falk.

  "What's happened?"

  "Please just do as I say. Wait in your car."

  She disappeared down the stairs. Martinsson was talking to someone at the station.

  "They're on their way."

  They waited motionless on the stairs. There were no sounds coming from the flat.

  "I told them not to turn on the sirens," Martinsson whispered.

  Wallander nodded.

  Eight minutes later Hansson appeared on the stairs with three other officers. Hansson had a gun. Wallander took a gun from one of the other policemen.

  "Let's go in," he said.

  The hand holding the gun was very slightly shaking. Wallander was afraid. He was always afraid when he was about to tackle a situation where anything was possible. He established eye contact with Hansson, then called out into the flat. There was no answer. He shouted again. Then the door behind them opened and he jumped. An old woman appeared, peering into the hall. Martinsson forced her back inside. Wallander called out a third time. Still no answer.

  Then they went in.

  The flat was empty. But it was not the flat he had left the night before with an impression of meticulous order. All the drawers had been pulled out and emptied onto the floor. Paintings hung askew and a record collection lay shattered on the floor.

  "There's no-one here," he said. "Let's get Nyberg and his people here as soon as possible. I don't want us disturbing the area more than we have to."

  Hansson and the others left. Martinsson set off to interview the neighbours. Wallander stood in the doorway to the living room and looked about him. How many times had he stood in a flat like this where a crime had been committed? Without being able to put his finger on it, he knew there was something changed. Something was missing. He let his gaze travel slowly through the room. When he was looking at the desk for the second time he realised what it was. He took off his shoes and approached the table.

  The photograph of the group of men against the white stone wall was gone. He bent over and looked under the desk. One by one he lifted the pieces of paper that had fallen on the ground. But it was nowhere to be seen. And something else was gone too. The diary. He took a step back and held his breath. Someone knew I was here, he thought. Someone saw me come and go. Was it an instinctive sense of this that had made him walk to the windows twice and look out at the street? There had been someone out there he hadn't been able to see. Someone hidden deep within the shadows.

  His thoughts were interrupted by Martinsson. "The woman opposite is a widow by the name of Håkansson. She hasn't seen or heard anything unusual."

  Wallander thought about the time he was drunk and had ended up spending the night in the flat below.

  "Talk to everyone who lives here. Find out if anyone has seen anything."

  "Can't we get someone else to do it? I have more than enough to do as it is."

  "It's important it be done right," Wallander said. "Not so many people live here anyway."

  Martinsson departed again and Wallander waited. One of Nyberg's team turned up after 20 minutes.

  "Nyberg is on his way," he said. "But he was doing something out at the substation that was apparently important."

  Wallander nodded. "Take a look at the answering machine," he said. "I want everything you can find on it."

  The officer made a note.

  "The whole flat should be videotaped," Wallander said. "I want it examined down to the last detail."

  "Are the people who live here away?"

  "The person who lived here was the man who was found dead by the cash machine," Wallander said. "It's very important that the forensic investigation is thorough."

  He left the flat and walked out on to the street. There were no clouds in the sky. Mrs Falk was smoking in her car. When she saw Wallander she got out.

  "What happened?"

  "There's been a break-in."

  "I wouldn't have believed anyone could have such utter disrespect for the dead."

  "I know you were divorced, but were you familiar with his flat?"

  "We were on good terms. I visited him here many times."

  "I'm going to ask you to return later today," Wallander said. "When the forensic team has finished, I want you to go through the flat with me. You may be able to notice something that's gone."

  "Oh, I doubt that," she said, without hesitation.

  "Why do you say that?"

  "I was married to him for many years. I knew him fairly well then, but not later on."

  "What happened?"

  "He just changed."

  "In what way?"

  "I didn't know what he was thinking any more."

  Wallander looked at her thoughtfully.

  "But even so, you may be able to see if something's been taken. You said yourself that you visited him here many times."

  "I could probably tell you if a lamp or a painting was missing, but nothing else. Tynnes had many secrets."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "Just what it says. I didn't know what he was thinking or what he did. I tried to explain this to you during our first telephone conversation."

  Wallander was reminded of what he had read in Falk's diary the night before.

  "Do you know if your husband kept a diary?"

  "I'm sure he didn't."

  "Did he ever keep one?"

  "Never."

  She's right on one score, he thought.

  "Was your ex-husband interested in outer space?"

  Her surprise seemed genuine.

  "Why do you ask?"

  "Just wondering."

  "We used to look up at the stars, when we were young, but I can't think of any sign of interest after that."

  Wallander switched to a new topic. "You said that your husband had many enemies, and that he appeared worried."

  "Yes, he actually said that to me."

  "What else did he say?"

  "That people like him always had enemies."

  "Was that all?"

  "Yes."

  "People like
me always have enemies?" he repeated.

  "Yes."

  "What did you think he meant?"

  "I've already told you, I no longer understood him."

  A car drew up where they were standing and Nyberg got out. Wallander decided to end the conversation for now and wrote down her phone number. He said he would be in touch later in the day.

  "One last question: can you think of any reason why someone would steal his body?"

  "Of course not."

  Wallander had no more questions. When she had climbed into her car and backed out of her parking space, Nyberg came over.

  "What's happened?" he said.

  "A break-in."

  "Do we really have time for this right now?"

  "It's connected to the other events. I don't know exactly how yet, but I'd like to see if you find anything in there."

  Nyberg blew his nose. "You were right," he said. "Once our colleagues in Malmö brought in that relay it was obvious. The substation workers were able to show us exactly where it belonged."

  Wallander suppressed his excitement. "No room for doubt?"

  "None at all."

  Nyberg went into the building. Wallander looked down the street in the direction of the department stores and the cash machine. The connection between Hökberg and Falk was confirmed. But what it meant he didn't yet know. He started back to the police station. After only a few yards he picked up his pace. Anxiety drove him on.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  When he got back to the station, Wallander set about constructing a reliable outline of the now chaotic mix of details, but the key events remained sharply separated in his mind. They collided only to continue on their separate ways.

  Shortly before 11 a.m. he went to the gents' and rinsed his face in cold water. That too was something he had picked up from Rydberg. Nothing is better for you when your impatience is threatening to take over your mind. Nothing is ever better than cold water.

  Then he went on to the canteen to get more coffee, but the machine was broken, as it often was. Martinsson had at some point suggested that they all pitch in to buy a new one. His argument was that no-one could reasonably expect good work from police officers without dependable access to coffee. Wallander looked unhappily at the machine and remembered that he had a tin of instant coffee somewhere in his desk. He returned to his room and started looking for it. He found it in the bottom drawer with some shoe-cleaning equipment and a pair of frayed gloves.

  Then he compiled a list of the events of the case. He made a time line in the margin. He was trying to break through the surface of the case to the layer in which all the events were connected. He knew it had to be there.

  When he had finished he felt as if he were looking at a nasty and incomprehensible fairy tale. Two girls went out and had some beers. One of the girls was so young she had no business being served in the first place. Some time during that evening they changed places. This happened at the same time as an Asian man came into the restaurant and sat down at a nearby table. This man paid with a fake credit card in the name of Fu Cheng, with a Hong Kong address.

  After a couple of hours the girls ordered a taxi, asked to be driven to Rydsgård and in due course attacked the driver. They took his money and left, each going to their separate homes. When they were taken in by the police they at once owned up, sharing the blame and saying that their motive was money. The older of the two girls took advantage of a momentary lapse in security and escaped from the police station. Later her charred corpse was found at the power substation outside Ystad. In all likelihood she was murdered. The substation in turn is an important link in the power distribution grid for southern Sweden. When Hökberg died, much of the region of Skåne was plunged into darkness. After this event Persson retracted her earlier confession and changed her story.

  At the same time, a parallel story was unfolding. There is a possibility that this parenthesis, this minor story, is in fact connected to the very heart of the other occurrence somehow. A divorced computer consultant by the name of Tynnes Falk cleaned his flat one Sunday, and then went for an evening walk. He was later found dead in front of a cash machine. After a preliminary investigation that included a conclusive autopsy report, the police eliminated any suspicion of a crime and considered the case closed. Later the man's body was removed from the morgue and an electrical relay from the Ystad substation was left in its place. Falk's flat was also broken into and – at the least – a diary and a framed photograph were taken. At the periphery of all these events, appearing in a group photograph and as a customer in a restaurant, was an Asian man.

  Wallander read through all that he had written. It was still early in the investigation, but while he had been laying out his summary he had seen a new connection. If Hökberg had been murdered it had to be because someone wanted to be sure she didn't talk. Falk's body had been removed to conceal something. This was the common denominator. The question is what needs to be covered up, Wallander thought, and by whom?

  Wallander was about to push his notes aside when something popped into his head. It was something Erik Hökberg had said, something about the vulnerability of modern society. Wallander looked again at his notes.

  What happened if he placed the power substation at the centre? With the grisly aid of a human body, someone had managed to disrupt the power in large areas of southern Sweden. It could therefore be viewed as sabotage. And why had the electrical relay been placed on the gurney when Falk's body was stolen? The only reasonable explanation was that someone had wanted the connection between Hökberg's fate and Falk to be made perfectly clear. But what did this connection mean?

  Wallander pushed his notes aside in irritation. It was too early to think of reaching a conclusion. They had to keep searching for more clues, without preconceived ideas.

  He drank his coffee absent-mindedly, rocking back and forth in his chair. Then he reached for the page he had torn from the newspaper and kept looking through the personal ads. What would I say in an ad? he wondered. Who would be interested in a 50-year-old policeman with diabetes and increasing doubts about his career choice? Someone who isn't particularly interested in walks in the forest, evenings in front of the fire or sailing? He put the page down and started writing.

  His first attempt was somewhat disingenuous: 50-year-old police officer, divorced, grown-up daughter, tired of being lonely. Appearance and age not important, but you should enjoy the comforts of home and opera. Send your answer to "Police '97".

  Lies, he thought. Appearance does matter. I'm not looking to end my loneliness. I want companionship. That's something completely different. I want someone to sleep with, someone who will be there when I want her. And someone who will leave me alone when I feel like it. He tore up the page and started again. This time the text was more truthful: 50-year-old police officer, diabetic, divorced, grown-up daughter, wishes to meet someone to spend time with. The woman I'm looking for is attractive, has a good figure and is interested in sex. Send your answer to "Old Dog".