Firewall

by Henning Mankell

  Wallander had the feeling that Modin was a somewhat lonely person, but however much he would have liked to sit and chat with him, Wallander had to move on. There was no time to waste.

  "I need to get hold of Robert as soon as possible," he said. "His computer expertise could be of help to us with a case."

  Modin puffed on his pipe. "Can I ask in what way?"

  "I can only tell you that it involves a complicated computer system."

  Modin nodded and got up. "I won't ask any more questions."

  He walked out into the hall. Wallander heard him speaking on the phone. He twisted around on the sofa to look at his father's painting.

  Modin came back. "He's on his way," he said. "They were in Skillinge, so it'll be a little while."

  "What did you tell him?"

  "That he wasn't to worry, but that the police needed his help."

  Modin sat down again. His pipe had gone out.

  "It must be important since you're here in the middle of the night."

  "Some things can't wait."

  Modin understood that Wallander didn't want to say anything more about it.

  "Can I get you anything?"

  "Some coffee would be nice."

  "In the middle of the night?"

  "I'm planning to put in a couple more hours of work. But I'm fine without it."

  "Of course you should have some coffee," Modin said.

  They were sitting in the kitchen when a car drew up outside the house. The front door opened and Robert Modin came in. Wallander thought he looked 13 years old. He had short hair, round glasses and a slight build. He was probably going to look more and more like his father as he got older. He was wearing jeans, a dress shirt and a leather jacket. Wallander got up and shook his hand.

  "I'm sorry I bothered you in the middle of a party."

  "We were about to leave anyway and a friend dropped me home."

  "I'll leave you two to talk," his father said, and left.

  "Are you tired?" Wallander asked.

  "Not particularly."

  "Good. There's something I want you to take a look at. I'll explain as we go."

  The boy was on his guard. Wallander attempted a smile.

  "Don't worry."

  "I'll have to change my glasses."

  He went upstairs to his room. Wallander walked into the living room and thanked Modin for the coffee.

  "I'll make sure he gets home safely. But I have to take him with me to Ystad right now."

  Modin looked worried again. "Are you sure he's not involved with anything?"

  "I promise. It's exactly as I told you – there's something I want him to look at."

  The boy came back and they left the house. It was 1.20 a.m. The boy got in on the passenger side and moved Wallander's phone.

  "Someone called you," Robert said.

  Wallander checked his voice mail. It was Hansson. I should have brought the phone in with me, Wallander thought.

  He dialled Hansson's number. It took a while before anyone answered.

  "Were you sleeping?"

  "Of course I was sleeping. What do you think? It's 1.30 a.m. I was there until 12.30. At that point I was so tired I thought I was going to pass out."

  "You tried to call."

  "I think actually we got something."

  Wallander sat up, alert.

  "Someone saw something?"

  "There was a woman with an Alsatian. She says she saw Falk the night he died."

  "Good. Did she see anything else?"

  "Very observant woman. Her name is Alma Högström, she's a retired dentist. She said she often used to see Falk in the evenings. He took regular walks, too, apparently."

  "What about the night the body was put back?"

  "She said she thought she saw a van that night. Around 11.30 p.m. It was in front of the cash machine. She noticed because it wasn't in the car park."

  "Did she see the driver?"

  "She said she thought she saw a man."

  "Thought?"

  "She wasn't sure."

  "Could she identify the van?"

  "I've asked her to come to the station tomorrow."

  "Good," Wallander said. "This may give us something."

  "Where are you? At home?"

  "Not exactly," Wallander said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

  It was 2 a.m. by the time Wallander pulled up outside the building in Runnerströms Torg. Wallander looked around. If anything dangerous were to happen, Modin would also be at risk. But there was no-one around. The rain had stopped.

  Wallander had tried to explain the situation on the way from Löderup. He simply wanted Modin to access the information on Falk's computer.

  "I know you're very good at this sort of thing," Wallander said. "I don't care about your business with the Pentagon. What I care about is what you know about computers."

  "I should never have been caught," Robert said suddenly in the dark. "It was my own fault."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I was sloppy about cleaning up after myself."

  "Cleaning up?"

  "If you break into a secured area you always leave a trace. It's like cutting a fence. When you leave you have to try to fix it so that no-one can see you were there. But I didn't do that well enough. That's why I was caught."

  "So there were people in the Pentagon who could see that someone in Löderup had paid them a visit?"

  "They couldn't see who I was or know my name. But they knew it was my computer."

  They went into the building and up the stairs. Wallander realised he was tense in anticipation. Before unlocking the door to the flat he listened for noise. Modin watched him closely, but said nothing.

  Once inside, Wallander closed the curtains, turned on the light and pointed to the computer. He offered Modin the chair. He sat down and turned on the machine without hesitation. The usual succession of numbers and symbols started flickering across the screen. Wallander hung back. Modin's fingers were hovering above the keyboard as if he were about to launch into a recital. He kept his face very close to the screen, as if he were searching for something Wallander couldn't see. Then he started tapping on the keyboard.

  He kept at it for about a minute, then he switched the computer off without warning and turned to face Wallander.

  "I've never seen anything like this," he said simply. "I'm not going to be able to get through it."

  Wallander sensed the disappointment, both in himself and in the boy. "Are you absolutely sure?"

  The boy shook his head. "At the very least I need to sleep first," he said. "And I'll need time. Lots of it, and without being rushed."

  Wallander realised the futility of bringing him out here in the middle of the night. Martinsson had been right. He grudgingly conceded that it had been Martinsson's hesitation that had spurred him on.

  "Do you have anything else planned for tomorrow?"

  "I can be here all day."

  Wallander turned off the light and locked the door behind him. Then he followed the boy out to the patrol car and asked the officer to drive him home. Someone would be by to pick him up around noon, when he had had a chance to sleep.

  Wallander drove back to Mariagatan. It was almost 3 a.m. by the time he crawled into bed. He fell asleep quickly, after deciding he would not go into the office before 11 a.m. the next day.

  The woman had been to the police station on Friday, shortly before 1 p.m. She had asked for a map of Ystad and the receptionist had told her to try either the local tourist information office or the bookshop. The woman had thanked her politely, then asked to use the toilet. The receptionist showed her the way. The woman had locked the door and opened the window. Then she closed it again, but only after covering the catches with tape. The cleaner on Friday evening noticed nothing.

  Early on Monday, around 4 a.m., the shadow of a man ascended the wall of the station and disappeared through the toilet window. The corridors were deserted. Only the faint sound of a radio came from the control
room. The man had a plan of the building obtained by breaking into a computer at an architectural firm. He knew exactly where to go.

  He gently opened the door to Wallander's office. A coat with a large yellow spot on the right lapel was hanging on the back of the door.

  The man walked over to the desk. He looked at the computer for a moment before flicking it on. What he was about to do would take around 20 minutes, but he wasn't worried that anyone would come in during that time. It was child's play to go into Wallander's files and examine what was there. When he had finished, he switched off the computer and then the light and opened the door. The corridor was empty. He left the same way he had come.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Sunday morning, October 12, Wallander woke at 9 a.m. Even though he had only slept six hours he felt fully rested. Before going into the station he decided to take a walk. The rain from the night before was gone. It was a fine and clear autumn day. It was almost 9°C.

  He walked through the front doors of the police station at 10.15 a.m. Before going to his office he walked past the control room and asked which of his colleagues had come in.

  "Martinsson is here. Hansson had to go and pick someone up. Höglund hasn't been in yet."

  "I'm here." Wallander heard her voice behind his back. "Did I miss anything?"

  "No," Wallander said. "But why don't you come with me."

  "I'll just take my coat off."

  Wallander told the officer on duty he needed a patrol car to be sent out around noon to pick up Robert Modin. He gave the directions.

  "Make sure it's an unmarked car," he added. "That's very important."

  A few minutes later Höglund came into his office. She looked a little less tired today. He thought about asking her how things were going at home. But then as usual he wondered if it was the right moment. Instead he told her about the potential eyewitness that Hansson had found and was bringing in as they spoke. He also told her about Robert Modin, who would perhaps be able to help them access the information in Falk's computer.

  "I remember him," she said, when Wallander had finished. "Do you think he'll find something important in that computer?"

  "I don't think anything. But we have to know what Falk was hatching. It seems to me that more and more people nowadays are really just electronic personalities."

  He went on to talk about the woman Hansson was bringing down to the station.

  "She will be the first person we have who has actually seen anything," Höglund said. She was leaning against the door frame. It was a newly acquired habit. She used to come right in and sit in his visitor's chair. "I did some thinking last night. I was watching TV, but I couldn't concentrate. The children had gone to bed."

  "Your husband?"

  "My ex-husband. He's in Yemen right now, I think. Anyway, I turned off the TV and sat in the kitchen with a glass of water. I tried to picture everything that had happened, as simply as possible, stripped of unnecessary details."

  "That's an impossible task," Wallander said. "I mean the part about the details. You can't know what's unnecessary at this point."

  "You're the one who's taught me to weigh facts against each other and discard what is less important."

  "What was your conclusion?"

  "Certain things seem firmly established, for example that there is a connection between Falk and Hökberg. The electrical relay gives us no choice in that department. But there's something about the timing of events that points to a possibility we haven't yet explored."

  "And what would that be?"

  "That Falk and Hökberg may not have had anything directly to do with each other."

  Wallander saw where she was going. It might be important. "You mean that they are only indirectly connected? By way of someone else?"

  "The reason Hökberg died may lie somewhere entirely removed from them both, since Falk was dead himself when Hökberg was burned to death. But the person who killed her could later have moved Falk's body."

  "That still doesn't tell us what we're looking for," Wallander said. "There's no common denominator."

  "Maybe we have to start again at the beginning," Höglund said thoughtfully. "With Lundberg, the taxi driver."

  "Do we have anything on him?"

  "His name doesn't appear in any register we have. I've spoken to a few of his colleagues and his widow and no-one had anything bad to say about him. He drove his taxi all day and spent his time off with his family. A normal, peaceful Swedish existence that came to an unexpectedly brutal end. What struck me last night while I was sitting in the kitchen was that his reputation seemed a bit too flawless. There isn't a smear anywhere. If you have nothing against it, I'd like to keep digging in his life for a bit."

  "That sounds good. Did he have any children?"

  "Two boys. One lives in Malmö, the other lives here in town. I was going to try to get hold of them today."

  "Go ahead. It's crucial to determine once and for all whether there was anything to Lundberg's murder other than a simple robbery."

  "Are we meeting today?"

  "I'll let you know if we do."

  Wallander thought about what she had said, then went out to the canteen and helped himself to coffee. He picked up a copy of the paper lying on a table. Once he got back to his office he started leafing through it, but stopped when something caught his eye. An ad for a dating agency, with the unoriginal name of "Computerdate". Wallander read the ad thoroughly. He switched on his computer and quickly sketched an application. He knew that if he didn't do it now he never would. No-one would have to know. He could be anonymous. He tried to write something as simple and direct as possible: Policeman, divorced, one child, seeking companionship. Not marriage, but love. He chose the name "Labrador" rather than "Old Dog". He printed it out and saved a copy on his hard drive. He put it in an envelope, wrote the address and stamped it. Then he put it in his pocket. He realised that he actually felt excited. Probably he would not get any replies, or if he did they would be ones he would immediately discard. But the excitement was there. He could not deny it.

  Then Hansson appeared in the doorway.

  "She's here," she said. "Alma Högström, our witness."

  Wallander got up and followed him to one of the small conference rooms. An Alsatian was lying on the floor next to the woman. It regarded them suspiciously. Wallander greeted her, sensing that she had dressed up for her visit to the station.

  "Your willingness to help the police in this matter is very much appreciated," he said. "Especially on a Sunday."

  He marvelled at the stilted phrases. How could he sound so dry and impersonal after all these years?