Firewall

by Henning Mankell

  Axel Modin came out.

  "Can I use your phone?" Wallander said.

  "Do you know what happened? Why Robert is so afraid?"

  "We're still trying to discover that. But there is nothing to worry about."

  Wallander said a silent prayer that his words would turn out to be true. He sat by the phone in the hall. Before lifting the receiver he reflected on what needed to be done. The first thing he had to address was whether or not there really was cause for alarm. The e-mail to Robert was real enough, for all that the source was hidden. And so far the case was characterised by secrecy and silence, and by people who did not hesitate to kill.

  Wallander decided that the threat to Robert was real. He couldn't take the chance of being wrong. He lifted the receiver and called the station. He was lucky enough to get on to Höglund right away. He told her what was going on and asked her to send patrol cars to search the area around Löderup. Since Robert was an unpractised driver he had probably not managed to get far. Perhaps he had already caused or been in an accident. Wallander called out to Axel Modin to give him the registration number as well as a description of the car. Höglund said she would take care of it. Wallander put the phone down and walked back up the stairs. Martinsson hadn't heard anything from Modin's hacker friends.

  "I need to use your car," Wallander said.

  "The keys are in the ignition," Martinsson said without taking his eyes off the screen.

  Wallander decided to take a look at the road that ran through the fields and that Robert could see through his window. Probably there was nothing there, but Wallander wanted to be sure. He drove out on to the road and started looking for the turn-off. He drove too fast on the muddy surface between the fields, but it was Martinsson's car and it was a way to take another small revenge. He stopped when he got to the point he had found through the binoculars. He got out and looked around. The rain was almost gone now and a thick fog was rolling in. If Martinsson looked up he would be able to see his car and its driver. Wallander looked down at the road and saw that another car had been there. He thought he could tell where it had stopped nearby, but the tracks were not easy to read. The rain had all but washed them away. But someone probably stopped here, he thought.

  Wallander felt uneasy. If someone had been keeping an eye on the house from here, he would have seen Modin leave in the car.

  He felt the sweat start to break out over his body. It's my responsibility, he thought. I should never have got him mixed up in this. It was too dangerous and I was irresponsible.

  He had to force himself to stay calm. Modin had panicked and wanted a gun. Then he had decided to leave in the car. The question he had to answer was: where had the boy gone?

  Wallander looked around one more time then drove back to the house through the thickening fog. Axel Modin met him at the door and raised his eyebrows.

  "I haven't found Robert," Wallander said. "But we are looking and there's no need to be concerned."

  Axel Modin did not believe him – Wallander could see it in his face – and he looked away. There was no sound from the living room.

  "Do you have any idea where he may have gone?" Wallander said.

  Axel Modin shook his head. "None at all."

  "But he had friends. When I came here that first night he had been at a party."

  "I've called all his friends. No-one has seen him. They promised to let me know if they did."

  "You have to think hard," Wallander said. "He's your son. He's scared and he took off in your car. What would he think of as a safe hiding place?"

  "He likes to walk on the beach " Modin said doubtfully. "Down by Sandhammaren or on the fields around Backåkra. I don't know of anywhere else."

  Wallander was also doubtful. A beach was too open, no better than a field. There was the fog of course. A better hiding place than a Skåne fog was hard to imagine.

  "Keep thinking," Wallander said. "You may be able to remember something else, some hiding place from his childhood."

  He called Höglund. The patrol cars had been dispatched. The Simrishamn police had been alerted. Wallander told her about Sandhammaren and Backåkra.

  "I'm going to Backåkra," he said. "Get a car to Sandhammaren."

  Höglund said she would and that she was coming out to Löderup. Wallander was hanging up as Martinsson came running down the stairs.

  "Rättvik got back to me," he said. "You were right. Vesuvius is registered in Luanda."

  Wallander nodded. He was not surprised by the news, but it ratcheted up his anxiety.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Wallander stood in the hall staring at Martinsson and felt his fear increase as the seconds ticked by. The only thing he was sure of was that they had to find Modin before it was too late. Images of Hökberg's scorched body and Landahl's butchered remains swept in front of his eyes. Wallander wanted to dash into the fog and start searching. But the situation was still unclear. Modin was out there somewhere, terrified. Landahl, too, had fled, but someone had caught up with him. And now Modin was in the same situation.

  Martinsson had discovered that some Brazilian entrepreneurs were responsible for the installation and upkeep of the server Vesuvius. But they had not yet identified the source of the message to Modin, even if Wallander suspected it to be "C", whoever that was, or maybe "C" was more than one person.

  Martinsson returned to the computers. Wallander had encouraged him to keep talking to Modin's friends in Rättvik and California. They might know of a possible hiding place.

  Wallander walked to the window and looked out. A strange silence seemed to accompany the fog. Wallander had never experienced it anywhere except here in Skåne in October and November, before winter struck. The landscape seemed to be holding its breath when the fog came in.

  Wallander heard a car pull up. He opened the front door. It was Höglund. She introduced herself to Axel Modin while Wallander walked to the stairs and asked Martinsson to come down. They sat around the kitchen table. Axel Modin hovered in the background, attending to his wife and her debilitating anxiety.

  For Wallander nothing else mattered now except finding the boy. It was not enough that they put patrol cars on the job, they needed to send out a regional alert. All neighbouring police districts should be involved in the search. Wallander gave this task to Martinsson.

  "He fled in a state of panic. We have no idea where he is," Wallander said. "We can't know the seriousness of the threat against him and we don't know if his movements were being watched, but that is what we're going to assume is the case."

  "They're very good, whoever they are," Martinsson said from the doorway with the telephone receiver pressed against his ear. "I know how conscientious he was about erasing his tracks."

  "That can't have been enough," Wallander said. "Especially if he copied material and kept working on it through the night after he got home. After he had said goodbye to us."

  "I have found nothing to confirm that," Martinsson said. "But you may be right."

  Once Martinsson had seen to the regional alert, they decided to establish their temporary headquarters at the house. It was possible that Modin would contact his father. Höglund would go to Sandhammaren with two patrol cars, while Wallander went to Backåkra.

  On the way out to the cars Wallander noticed that Höglund was carrying her gun. Once she had gone Wallander went back to the house. Axel Modin was sitting in the kitchen.

  "I'd like the shotgun," Wallander said. "And some cartridges." Wallander could see the fear flare up in the man's face. "It's just a precautionary measure," he said.

  Modin got up and left the kitchen. When he came back he had the shotgun and a box of cartridges with him.

  Wallander was back in Martinsson's car, driving to Backåkra. Cars were crawling along. Headlights emerged from the fog and were swallowed up again. The whole time he was racking his brains to work out where Modin might have gone. Had he left without a thought in his head, or had he had a plan? Wallander realised he wasn't
going to get anywhere. He didn't know the boy well enough.

  He almost missed the turning to Backåkra. He increased his speed a little, though he was on a narrower road. He didn't expect to meet other cars here. The grounds as well as the house were owned by the Swedish Academy, the elite group of writers and intellectuals responsible for awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature every year. It was probably deserted at this time of year. He found his way into the car park and got out, taking the shotgun with him. He heard a foghorn in the distance, and he could smell the sea. Visibility was minimal. He walked around the car park but there was no other car. He walked to the house and round its outer buildings, but it was all thoroughly secured. What am I doing here? he wondered. If there's no car, then there's no Robert either. But something drove him on towards the fields. He went to the right, where he knew he would find the small meditation garden. A bird squawked nearby. The fog made it impossible to judge distances. He reached the ring of stones that bordered the garden. He could hear the sea clearly now. No-one was there and no-one seemed to have been there either. He got out his phone and called Höglund. She was in Sandhammaren. No sign of Modin's car there either.

  "The fog is very localised," she told him. "Air traffic is normal at Sturup. A bit north of Brösarp everything is clear."

  "I don't think he's gone that far," Wallander said. "He's still in the area, I'm sure of it."

  He ended the conversation and started back. Suddenly something caught his attention. He listened. A car was approaching. He concentrated intensely. Modin had gone off in a Golf. But the engine noise of this car was different. He loaded the shotgun. Then he pressed on. The engine stopped. Wallander waited. A car door was opened, but not closed. Wallander was sure it was not Modin. Perhaps it was a caretaker coming to see to the place. Or to find out who it was who had just arrived, to make sure it was not a burglar. Wallander thought about getting closer, but his instinct warned him not to. What it was, he couldn't say. He left the path he was on and made a wide circle back, heading towards the far end of the car park. From time to time he stopped. I would have heard someone unlock the door and enter the house, he thought. But it's too quiet out there. Much too quiet.

  He was directly behind the house. He took a few steps back and it disappeared into the grey fog. Then he walked towards the car park. He climbed over the fence with some difficulty. Then he slowly reconnoitred the car park. It was harder than before to see his way. He thought that it was probably a bad idea to get too close to Martinsson's car. Better to go round it. He stayed close to the fence so he wouldn't lose his bearings.

  He stopped when he had reached the entrance. There was the car. Or rather, the van. At first he wasn't sure what it was, but then it dawned on him: it was a dark blue Mercedes van.

  He took a few quick paces back into the fog and listened. His heart was beating fast. He undid the safety catch on the shotgun. The driver's door was standing open. He stood stock still. This was undoubtedly the van they had been looking for. The one that had brought Falk's body back to the cash machine. And here it was, out in the fog looking for Modin.

  But Modin isn't here, Wallander thought.

  Then he realised that it could be him they were looking for. If they had seen Modin drive away they could have been watching him too. He replayed his drive here. No car had overtaken him, but had there been headlights in his rear-view mirror?

  His mobile rang in his pocket. Wallander jumped and answered as quickly as he could with a low voice. It wasn't Martinsson or Höglund. It was Elvira Lindfeldt.

  "I hope I'm not disturbing you," she said. "But I wonder if we could set a date for tomorrow. That is, if you'd still like to."

  "I'm a bit busy right now," Wallander said.

  She asked him to speak up, saying it was hard to hear him.

  "Can I call you back?" he asked. "I'm tied up right now."

  "I really can't hear you very well," she said.

  He raised his voice as far as he dared. "I can't talk now. I'll call you back."

  "I'm at home," she said.

  Wallander switched off his phone. This is insane, he thought. She won't understand. She will think I'm avoiding her. Why did she have to pick this time to call, for heaven's sake?

  Then he had a thought that made his head spin. He couldn't imagine where it had come from and he brushed it aside before it had a chance to take hold. But it had been there, like a dark undercurrent in his mind. Why did she call now? Was it a mere coincidence?

  It was an unreasonable thought and it was a symptom of his exhaustion and the growing sense of being the object of his colleagues' conspiracies to get rid of him. He stared at the mobile before putting it back. He would call her back as soon as this was over. He was putting the phone into his pocket when it slipped his grasp. He bent to try to catch it before it fell onto the wet ground.

  That saved his life. In the same instant there exploded a terrific noise above and behind him. He abandoned the phone and raised his shotgun. Something was moving in the fog. Wallander dropped to the ground and crawled away as fast as he could. His heart was beating wildly. Someone had fired a gun at him and he didn't know from where. He must have heard my voice, Wallander thought. He heard me and was creeping up towards me. If I hadn't dropped the phone, I would be dead now. The thought terrified him. The shotgun shook in his hands. He didn't know where his phone was nor the car. He lost all sense of direction as he crawled. He only wanted to get away, but when he had put enough distance between him and where the shot had just missed him, he forced himself to kneel on one knee with the shotgun at the ready, and waited. The man was there, but there was no sound. Wallander tried to see through the thick white mass and strained his ears. Perhaps he shouldn't stay. He wanted to leave. He made up his mind. He fired into the air. The bang was deafening and he ran a few metres to one side, then stopped and listened. He reloaded. He was close to the fence and knew which way to go to get out of the car park.

  Then there was a new sound. Sirens were rapidly approaching. Someone heard that first shot, he thought. There are plenty of police on the roads right now. He ran along the fence towards the entrance. Now he had a leg up on his opponent, and that feeling was transforming his fear to rage. He had been shot at for the second time in a few days. But he also tried to think clearly. The Mercedes van was still there, and there was only one way out of the car park. If the man dared to take the vehicle it would be easy to get him. If he fled on foot it would be much harder.

  Wallander reached the entrance and ran down the road. The sirens were closer now, signalling one, maybe even two or three, patrol cars. Hansson was in the first car. Wallander had never been so glad to see him.

  "What's happening here?" Hansson shouted. "We got a report of guns fired in the area. And Höglund said you were down here."

  Wallander tried to explain what had happened as succinctly as possible. "No-one goes down there without proper protection," he finished. "We mainly need dogs, but first we have to be prepared for the possibility that he tries to shoot his way out."

  They put on their vests and helmets and quickly erected a barrier. Then Höglund arrived, closely followed by Martinsson.

  "The fog is going to lift very soon," Martinsson said. "I've talked to the National Weather Service."

  They waited on the road outside the car park. It was 1 p.m. on Saturday, October 18. Wallander had borrowed Hansson's phone and walked off to one side. He dialled Elvira's number, but he changed his mind and hung up before she answered.

  The fog didn't lift until 1.30 p.m., but then it dispersed in a matter of minutes and the sun came out. There were the van and Martinsson's car. No-one was to be seen. Wallander walked over and retrieved his mobile.