Firewall

Chapter One

The wind died down toward evening, then stopped completely.

He was standing on the balcony. Some days he could see a sliver of ocean between the buildings across the way. Right now it was too dark. Sometimes he set up his telescope and looked into the lighted windows of the other apartments. But he always started to feel as if someone was onto him and then he would stop.

The stars were very clear and bright.

It’s already fall, he thought. There may even be a touch of frost tonight, though it’s early for Scania.

A car drove by. He shivered and went back in. The door to the balcony was hard to close and needed some adjustment. He added it to the to-do list he kept on a pad of paper in the kitchen.

He walked into the living room, pausing in the doorway to look around. Since it was Sunday, the place was immaculately clean. It gave him a feeling of satisfaction.

He sat down at his desk and pulled out the thick journal he kept in one of the drawers. As usual, he began by reading his entry from the night before.

Below that he had added four sentences.

He removed the lid of the ink pot and carefully dipped the nib in the ink. It had been his father’s pen, one his father had saved from his early days as an assistant clerk at a bank in Tomelilla. He never used any other pen for writing in his journal.

The wind died away as he was writing. The thermometer outside the kitchen window read three degrees Celsius. The sky was clear. He made a note of the fact that cleaning the apartment had taken three hours and twenty-five minutes. That was ten minutes faster than last Sunday.

He had also taken a short walk down to the marina, after meditating in Saint Maria’s church for thirty minutes.

He hesitated, then wrote, Short walk in the evening.

He pressed the blotting paper over the few lines he had just written, wiped off the pen, and replaced the lid of the ink pot.

Before shutting the journal, he glanced over at the old ship’s clock that stood next to him on the desk. It was twenty minutes past eleven.

He walked out into the hall, put on his leather jacket, and pulled on an old pair of rubber boots. He stuck a hand in his pocket to make sure he had his wallet and his keys.

Once he was down on the street, he stood in the shadows for a while and looked around. There was no one there, just as he had expected. He started walking down to the left, as he usually did, crossing the highway to Malmö and heading down toward the department stores and the red brick building that housed the Tax Authorities. He increased his speed until he found his usual smooth evening rhythm. He walked quickly in the daytime to get his heart rate up, but the evening walks had a different purpose. This was when he tried to empty his mind, preparing for sleep and the day to come.

Outside one of the department stores, he passed a woman with a German shepherd. He almost always bumped into her on his evening walks. A car drove by at high speed, music blaring.

They have no inkling of what’s in store for them, he thought. All these hooligans who drive around permanently damaging their hearing with their obnoxious music. They don’t know. They know as little as that woman out walking her dog.

The thought cheered him up. He thought about the power he wielded, the sense of being one of the chosen. He had the power to do away with the hardened, corrupt ways of this society and create a new order, something completely unexpected.

He stopped and looked up at the night sky.

Nothing is truly comprehensible, he thought. My own life is as incomprehensible as the fact that the light I now see from the stars has been traveling for eons. The only source of meaning is my own course of action, like the deal that I was offered twenty years ago and that I accepted without hesitation.

He continued on his way, increasing his speed because his thoughts were making him excited. He felt a growing sense of impatience. They had waited so long for this. Now the moment was approaching when they would open the invisible dams and watch their tidal wave sweep over the world.

But not yet. The moment was not quite here, and impatience was a weakness he would not permit himself.

He turned and started back. As he walked past the Tax Authority, he decided to go to the cash machine in the plaza. He put his hand over the pocket where he kept his wallet. He wasn’t going to make a withdrawal, just get an account balance and make sure all was as it should be.

He stopped in the light by the ATM and took out his card. The woman with the German shepherd was long gone. A heavily loaded truck drove past on the Malmö highway, probably on its way to one of the Poland ferries. By the sound of it, the muffler was damaged.

He fed his card into the slot, punched in his code, and selected the button for account balance. The machine returned his card and he slipped it back into his wallet. He listened to the whirring and clicking and smiled. If they only knew, he thought. If people only knew what lay in store for them.

The white slip of paper with his account balance slid out of the slot. He felt around for his glasses before he realized he had left them in his other coat. He felt a twinge of irritation at this oversight.

He walked over to the place under the street lamp where the light was strongest and studied the slip of paper.

There was Friday’s withdrawal, as well as the cash he had taken out the day before. His balance was 9,765 kronor. Everything was in order.

What happened next came without warning.

It was as if he had been kicked by a horse. The pain was sudden and violent.

He fell forward with the white piece of paper clutched in his hand.

As his head hit the asphalt he had a final moment of clarity. His last thought was that he didn’t understand what was happening.

Then a darkness enveloped him from all sides.

It was just past midnight on Monday, the 6th of October, 1997.

A second truck on its way to the night ferry drove by.

Then calm returned to the streets once more.

Chapter Two

When Kurt Wallander got into his car on Mariagatan in Ystad, on the morning of the 6th of October, 1997, it was with reluctance. It was a little after eight o’clock. He drove out of the city, wondering what had possessed him to say he would go. He had a deep and passionate dislike of funerals, and yet that was exactly what he was on his way to attend. Since he had plenty of time, he decided against taking the direct route to Malmö. Instead, he took the coastal highway toward Svarte and Trelleborg. He glimpsed the sea on his left-hand side. A ferry was approaching the harbor.

He thought about the fact that this was his fourth funeral in seven years. First there had been his colleague Rydberg, who died of cancer. It had been a protracted and painful end. Wallander had often visited him in the hospital where he lay slowly wasting away. Rydberg’s death had been a huge blow. Rydberg was the one who had made a police officer out of him. He had taught Wallander to ask the right questions. Through watching him work, Wallander had slowly learned how to read the information hidden at the scene of a crime. Before he started working with Rydberg, Wallander had been a very average policeman. It was only after many years, after Rydberg’s death, that Wallander realized he had become not only a stubborn and energetic detective, but a good one. He still held long, silent conversations with Rydberg in his head when he tackled a new investigation and didn’t quite know how to proceed. He experienced a brief sense of loss and sadness at Rydberg’s absence almost every day. Those feelings would never go away.

Then there was his father, who had died unexpectedly. He had collapsed from a stroke in his studio in Löderup. That was three years ago. Sometimes Wallander still had trouble grasping the fact that his father wasn’t still in the studio, surrounded by the smell of turpentine and oil paint. The house in Löderup had been sold after his death. Wallander had driven past it a couple of times since then and seen that new people were living there. He had never stopped the car and taken a closer look. From time to time he went to his father’s grave, always with an inexplicable feeling of guilt. These visits were getting less frequent. He had also noticed that it was getting harder for him to visualize his father’s face.

A person who died eventually became a person who had never existed.

Then there was Svedberg, his colleague who had been so brutally murdered only one year ago. That had made Wallander realize how little he knew about the people he worked with. During the investigation he had uncovered a more complicated network of relationships in Svedberg’s life than he would ever have been able to dream of.

And now he was on his way to funeral number four, the only one he didn’t really have to go to.

She had called on Wednesday, just as Wallander was about to leave the office. It was late afternoon and he had a bad headache from concentrating on a depressing case involving smuggled cigarettes. The tracks seemed to lead to northern Greece, then went up in smoke. Wallander had exchanged information with both German and Greek police. But they had still not managed to arrest the smugglers. Now he realized that the driver of the truck that contained the smuggled goods probably had no idea what had been in his load. But he would end up going to jail, at least for a couple of months. Nothing else would come of it. Wallander was certain that smuggled cigarettes arrived daily in Ystad. He doubted they would ever be able to put a stop to it.

His day had also been poisoned by an argument with the district attorney, the man who was filling in for Per Åkeson, who had gone to Sudan a couple of years ago and seemed to be in no hurry to return. Wallander was filled with envy whenever he got a letter from Åkeson. He had done what Wallander had only dreamed of: starting over. Now Wallander was about to turn fifty and he knew, though he had trouble admitting such a thing to himself, that the decisive events of his life were already behind him. He would never be anything but a police officer. The best he could do in the years leading up to retirement was try to become better at solving crimes, and pass on his knowledge to the younger generation of his colleagues. But there were no lifealtering decisions waiting for him, no Sudan.

He was just about to put his jacket on when she called.

At first he hadn’t known who she was.

Then he realized she was Stefan Fredman’s mother. Memories and isolated images from the events three years ago rushed back in the space of a few seconds. It was the case of the boy who had painted himself to look like a Native American warrior and set out to revenge himself on the men who had driven his sister insane and filled his younger brother with terror. One of the victims had been Stefan’s own father. Wallander flinched at one of the last, most disturbing images, of the boy kneeling by his sister’s dead body and crying. He didn’t know what had happened afterward, except that the boy had been sent to a locked psychiatric ward rather than prison.

Now Anette Fredman had called to say the boy was dead. He had committed suicide by throwing himself out the window. Wallander had expressed his condolences and they had been genuine, though perhaps what he felt was a sense of hopelessness and despair rather than grief. But he still had not understood why she had called him. He had stood there with the receiver in his hand and tried to recall her face. He had only met her on two or three occasions in her home in a suburb of Malmö, when he had been struggling with the idea that a fourteen-year-old boy had committed these heinous crimes. She had been shy and tense. She had always seemed to be cringing, as if expecting everything to turn out for the worst. In her case, they often did. Wallander remembered that he had wondered if she were addicted to alcohol or prescription medication. But he didn’t know. He could hardly remember her face. Her voice on the telephone sounded completely unfamiliar.

Then she told him why she was calling. She wanted Wallander to attend the funeral. There were so few people who were coming. She was the only one left now, except her youngest son, Jens. Wallander had, after all, been someone who wished them well.

He promised to be there. He changed his mind the moment he said the words, but by then it was too late.

Later he had tried to find out what happened to the boy after his admittance to the psychiatric ward. He spoke with one of Stefan’s doctors. He was told that Stefan had been almost completely silent during the past few years, closed off from the outside world. But the boy who came smashing down onto that slab of concrete on the hospital grounds had worn full-blown warrior paints. That disturbing mask of paint and blood held little clue as to who the young person locked inside had really been, but it spoke volumes about the violent and largely indifferent society in which he had been formed.

Wallander drove slowly along the road. He had been surprised when he put on his suit that morning and found that the pants fit. He must have lost weight. Ever since being diagnosed with diabetes the previous year he had been forced to modify his eating habits, start exercising, and lose weight. At first he had been too extreme and had jumped on the bathroom scale several times a day, until he finally threw it out in a rage.

But his doctor had not let up, insisting that Wallander do something about his unhealthy eating habits and his almost total absence of exercise. His nagging had finally produced results. Wallander had bought a sweatsuit and sneakers and started taking regular walks. But when his colleague Martinsson had suggested they start running together, Wallander had refused. He drew the line at jogging. Now he had established a regular route for his walks that took about an hour. It went from Mariagatan through the Sandskogen park, and back. He forced himself out on a walk at least four times a week, and had also forced himself to stay away from his favorite hamburger places. Accordingly, his blood sugar levels had dropped and Wallander had lost weight. One morning as he was shaving in front of the mirror he noticed that his cheeks were hollow again. It was like getting his old face back after having worn an artificial padding of fat and bad skin. His daughter, Linda, had been delighted with the change when she saw him last. But no one down at the station had made any comments about his appearance.

It’s as if we never really see each other, Wallander thought. We work together, but we don’t see each other.

Wallander drove by Mossby beach, which lay deserted now that it was fall. He remembered the time six years ago when a rubber raft carrying two dead men had drifted ashore here.

On a whim, he slammed on the brakes and turned the car around. He had plenty of time. He parked and got out of the car. There was no wind and it was perhaps a couple of degrees above freezing. He buttoned his coat and followed the small trail that snaked out between the sand dunes to the sea. The beach was deserted, but there were traces of people and dogs — and horses — in the sand. He looked out over the water. A flock of birds was flying south in formation.

He still remembered exactly where they had found the bodies. It had been a difficult investigation that had led Wallander to Latvia. He had met Baiba in Riga. She was the widow of a Latvian police officer, a man Wallander had known and liked.

Then they had started seeing each other. For a long time he had thought it was going to work out, that she would move to Sweden. They had even started looking at houses. But then she had started to pull away. Wallander had thought jealously that she had met someone else. He even flew to Riga once without telling her in advance so he could surprise her. But there had been no one else, just Baiba’s doubts about marrying another police officer and leaving her homeland, where she had an underpaid but rewarding job as a translator.

So it had ended.

Wallander walked along the beach and realized that a year had gone by since he had last talked to her. She still sometimes appeared in his dreams, but he never managed to grab hold of her. When he approached her or put out his hand to touch her, she was gone. He asked himself if he really missed her. His jealousy was gone now; he no longer flinched at the thought of her with another man.

I miss the companionship, he thought. With Baiba I managed to escape the loneliness I hadn’t even been aware of.

He returned to the car. I should avoid deserted beaches in the fall, he thought. They make me depressed.

Once he had taken refuge from his normal life in a remote part of northern Jylland. He had been on sick leave due to a deep depression and had thought he would never return to his work as a police officer in Ystad again. It was many years ago, but he could still recall in terrifying detail how he had felt. It was something he never wanted to experience again. That bleak and blustery landscape had seemed to awaken his worst fears.

He got in the car and continued on to Malmö. He wondered what the coming winter was going to be like, if there would be a lot of snow or if it would simply rain. He also wondered what he was going to do during the week of vacation he was due to take in November. He had talked to Linda about taking a charter flight to a warmer climate. It would be his treat. But she was still up in Stockholm, studying something — he didn’t know what — and said she really couldn’t get away. He had tried to think of other travel companions but had not managed to come up with anyone. He had almost no friends. There was Sten Widen, who raised horses on a ranch outside of Ystad, but Wallander wasn’t sure he would be such a good travel companion. Widen drank constantly, while Wallander was struggling to keep his own once-considerable alcohol consumption to a minimum. He could ask Gertrud, his father’s widow. But what would they talk about for a whole week?

There was no one else.

He would stay home and use the money to buy a new car. The Peugeot was getting old. It had started to make a funny sound.

He entered the suburb of Rosengård shortly after ten o’clock. The funeral was scheduled for eleven. The church was a modern building. Nearby some boys were kicking a soccer ball against a concrete wall. There were seven in all, three of them black. Three others also looked like they might have immigrant parents. The last one had freckles and unruly blond hair. The boys were kicking the ball around with enthusiasm and a great deal of laughter. For a split second Wallander felt an overwhelming urge to join them. But he stayed where he was. A man walked out of the church and lit a cigarette. Wallander got out of the car and approached him.

“Is this where Stefan Fredman’s funeral is going to be held?” he asked.

The man nodded. “Are you a relative?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think there would be very many people here,” the man said. “I take it you know what he did.”

“Yes, I know,” Wallander said.

The man looked down at his cigarette.

“Someone like him is better off dead.”

Wallander felt himself getting angry.

“Stefan wasn’t even eighteen years old. Someone that young is never better off dead.”

Wallander realized he was yelling. The man with the cigarette looked at him with curiosity. Wallander shook his head angrily and turned around. At that moment the hearse drove up. The brown coffin was unloaded. There was only a single wreath of flowers on it. I should have brought a bouquet, Wallander thought.

He walked over to the boys, who were still playing soccer.

“Any of you know of a flower shop around here?” he asked.

One of the boys pointed into the distance.

Wallander took out his wallet and held up a hundred-crown note.

“Run over and buy me some flowers,” he said. “Roses. And hurry back. I’ll give you ten crowns for your troubles.”

The boy looked at him with big eyes, but took the money.

“I’m a police officer,” Wallander said. “A dangerous police officer. If you make off with the money, I’ll find you.”

The boy shook his head.

“Then why aren’t you wearing a uniform?” he asked in broken Swedish. “You don’t look like a policeman. Not a dangerous one, anyway.”

Wallander got out his police badge and showed it to him. The boy studied it for a while, then nodded and set off. The rest of them resumed their game.

There’s a good chance he won’t be back, Wallander thought gloomily. It’s been a long time since civilians had any sense of respect for the police.

But the boy returned with the roses, as promised. Wallander gave him twenty crowns, the ten he owed him and ten more for actually coming back, realizing that he was being overly generous. Shortly thereafter, a taxi pulled up and Stefan’s mother got out. She had aged and was so thin she looked sick. A young boy of about seven stood by her side. He looked a lot like his brother. His eyes were wide and frightened. He still lived in fear from that time. Wallander walked over and greeted them.

“It’s just going to be us and the minister,” she said.

They walked into the church. The minister was a young man who was sitting on a chair next to the coffin, leafing through a newspaper. Wallander felt Anette Fredman suddenly grab hold of his arm.

He understood.

The minister got up and put his newspaper away. They sat down to the right of the coffin. She was still hanging onto Wallander’s arm.

First she lost her husband, Wallander thought. Björn Fredman had been an unpleasant and brutal man who used to hit her and who frightened his children. But he had still been her husband and the father of her children. He was later murdered by his own son. Then her oldest child, Louise, had died. And now here she is, about to bury her son. What’s left for her? Half a life? As much as that?

Someone entered the church behind them. Anette Fredman did not seem to hear anything, or else she was trying so hard to stay in control of herself that she couldn’t focus on anything else. A woman was walking up the aisle. She was about Wallander’s age. Anette Fredman finally looked up and nodded to her. The woman sat down a few rows behind them.

“She’s a doctor,” Anette Fredman said. “Her name is Agneta Malmström. She helped Jens a while back when he wasn’t doing so well.”

Wallander recognized the name, but it took him a moment to remember that it was Agneta Malmström and her husband who had provided him with the most important clues in the Stefan Fredman case. He had spoken to her late one night with the help of Stockholm Radio. She had been on a sailboat far out at sea, out past Landsort.

Wallander heard organ music, although he had not seen an organist. The minister had turned on a tape recorder.

Wallander wondered why he had not heard any church bells. Didn’t funerals always start with the ringing of church bells? This thought was pushed aside when Anette Fredman’s grip on his arm tightened. He cast a glance at the boy by her side. Should a child his age be attending a funeral? Wallander didn’t think so. But the boy looked fairly collected.

The music died away and the minister started to speak. He started by reminding them of Christ’s words, “let the little ones come unto me.” Wallander concentrated on the wreath that lay on the coffin, counting the blossoms in order to keep the lump in his throat from growing.

The service was short. Afterward they approached the coffin. Anette Fredman was breathing hard, as if she were in the final few yards of a race. Agneta Malmström stood right behind them. Wallander turned to the minister, who seemed impatient.

“Why were there no church bells?” Wallander asked him. “There should be bells ringing as we walk out, and not a recording, either.”

The minister nodded hesitantly. Wallander wondered what would have happened if he had pulled out his police ID. They started walking out. Anette and Jens Fredman went ahead of the others. Wallander said hello to Agneta Malmström.

“I recognized you,” she said. “We’ve never met, but I’ve seen your face in the papers.”

“She asked me to come. Did she call you, too?”

“No, I came of my own accord.”

“What’s going to happen to her now?”

Agneta Malmström shook her head slowly.

“I don’t know. She’s started drinking heavily. I have no idea how Jens is going to get on.”

At this point they reached the vestibule, where Anette Fredman and Jens were waiting for them. The church bells rang. Wallander opened the church doors, taking one last look at the coffin. Some men were already in the process of removing it through a side door.

Suddenly a flash went off in his face. There was a press photographer waiting outside the church. Anette Fredman held up her hands to shield her face. The photographer turned from her and tried to get a picture of the boy. Wallander put out his arm to stop him, but the photographer was too quick. He got his picture.

“Why can’t you leave us alone?” Anette Fredman cried.

The boy started to cry. Wallander grabbed the photographer and pulled him aside.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he yelled.

“None of your fucking business,” said the photographer. He was about Wallander’s age and had bad breath.

“I shoot whatever sells,” he added. “Pictures of a serial killer’s funeral sell. Too bad I didn’t get here earlier.”

Wallander reached for his police ID, then changed his mind and snatched the camera. The photographer tried to pull it out of his hands, but Wallander was stronger. In a split second he had opened the camera and pulled out the film.

“There have to be limits,” Wallander said and handed the camera back to him.

The photographer stared at him, then hauled his cell phone out of his pocket.

“I’m calling the cops,” he said. “That was assault.”

“Go ahead,” Wallander said. “Do it. I’m a detective with the homicide division in Ystad. Inspector Kurt Wallander. Please call my colleagues in Malmö and tell them whatever you want.”

Wallander let the roll of film fall on the ground and broke it up with his foot. The church bells stopped ringing.

Wallander was sweaty and still enraged. Anette Fredman’s shrill plea to be left alone echoed in his head. The photographer stared at the destroyed roll of film. The group of boys were still playing soccer.

When she had called, Anette Fredman had asked him to join them for coffee after the service. He had not been able to say no.

“There won’t be any pictures in the paper,” Wallander said.

“Why can’t they leave us alone?”

Wallander had nothing to say. He looked over at Agneta Malmström, but she had nothing to say, either.

The apartment in the shabby rental building was exactly as Wallander remembered it. Agneta Malmström accompanied them. They sat quietly while they waited for the coffee to brew. Wallander thought he heard the clink of a glass bottle in the kitchen.

Jens was sitting on the floor playing quietly with a toy car. Wallander realized that Agneta Malmström found it all as depressing as he did, but there seemed to be nothing to say.

They sat there with their coffee cups. Anette Fredman sat across from them with shiny eyes. Agneta Malmström tried to ask her how she was managing financially now that she was unemployed. Anette Fredman answered in vague perfunctory phrases.

“We manage. Things will work out somehow. One day at a time.”

The conversation died away. Wallander looked down at his watch. It was close to one o’clock. He got up and shook Anette Fredman’s hand. She burst into tears. Wallander was taken aback. He didn’t know what to do.

“You go,” Agneta Malmström said. “I’ll stay with her a little while.”

“I’ll call to see how things are going,” Wallander said. Then he awkwardly patted the boy’s head, and left.

He sat in the car for a while before starting the engine. He thought about the photographer who was so sure the pictures of a serial killer’s funeral would sell.

I can’t deny that this is how it is now, he thought. But I also can’t deny that I don’t understand a single bit of it.

He drove through the fall landscape toward Ystad.

It had been a hell of a morning.

He parked the car and walked in through the doors of the police station shortly after two.

The wind had picked up from the east. A cloud belt was moving in over the coast.

Chapter Three

By the time Wallander reached the office, he had a headache. He looked through his desk drawers to see if he could find any tablets. He heard Hansson walk past his door whistling to himself. He finally found a crumpled packet of acetaminophen in the back of a drawer. He went to the lunchroom to get himself a glass of water and a cup of coffee. Some young police officers, who had been hired during the last couple of years, were sitting at one table talking loudly. Wallander nodded to them and said hello. He heard them talking about their time at the police academy. He walked back to his office and watched the two headache tablets slowly dissolve in the glass of water.

He thought about Anette Fredman, and tried to imagine what the future might hold for the little boy in the impoverished suburb of Rosengård who had played so quietly on the apartment floor. He had seemed as if he were hiding from the world, carrying within him his memories of a dead father and now two equally dead siblings.

Wallander drained the glass in front of him and immediately felt the headache lifting. He looked at a case folder that Martinsson had put on his desk, with “Urgent as all hell” written on a red Post-it note on the front. Wallander already knew the facts of the case. They had discussed it on the phone last week while Wallander was at a national police conference on new directions for policing the violence associated with the growing motorcycle-gang movement. Wallander had asked to be excused, but Chief Holgersson had insisted. She specifically wanted him on this. One of the gangs had just bought a farm outside of Ystad and they had to be prepared to deal with them in the future.

Wallander decided to return to being a police officer and opened the folder with a sigh. Martinsson had written a concise report of the events. When he’d gotten to the end of it, Wallander leaned back in his chair and thought about what he had just read.

Two girls, one nineteen, the other not more than fourteen, had ordered a taxi at a restaurant shortly after ten o’clock on a Tuesday evening. They had asked to be driven to Rydsgard. One of the girls was in the front seat. When they reached the outskirts of Ystad she asked the driver to stop the car saying she wanted to move to the back seat. When the taxi pulled over to the side of the road, the girl in the backseat had pulled out a hammer and hit the driver in the head. The girl in the front seat had helped her companion by stabbing him in the chest with a knife. They had taken the driver’s wallet and cell phone and left the car. The driver had been able to make an emergency call on the taxi radio despite his condition. His name was Johan Lundberg and he was sixty years old. He had been a taxi driver almost all his adult life. He had been able to give good descriptions of both girls. Martinsson had been able to get their names by describing them in turn to the restaurant patrons. Both girls had been arrested in their homes. Although they were so young, both were now being held in custody due to the severity and violence of the crime. Johan Lundberg had been conscious when he was admitted at the hospital, but later his condition had suddenly deteriorated. Now he was unconscious and the doctors were unsure of the prognosis. As a motive for the crime, according to Martinsson, the girls had only offered the brief explanation that they “needed money.”

Wallander grimaced. He had never seen anything like it — two young girls involved in such meaningless brutality. According to Martinsson’s notes, the younger girl had a high grade-point average. The older one was a hotel receptionist and had previously worked as a nanny in London. She had just enrolled at the local community college. Neither one of them had ever been involved with the authorities before.

I just don’t get it, Wallander thought. This total lack of respect for human life. They could have killed that taxi driver, it may even turn out that way if he dies in the hospital. Two girls. If they had been boys, maybe I could understand, if only because I’m used to it by now.

He was interrupted by a knock on the door. His colleague Ann-Britt Höglund came in the door. As usual, she looked pale and tired. Wallander thought about the change she had undergone since first coming to Ystad. She had been one of the best of her graduating class at the Police Academy and had arrived with a great deal of energy and ambition. Today she still possessed a strong will, but she was changed. The paleness in her face came from within.

“Do you want me to come back later?” she asked.

“No, by all means.”

She sat down gingerly in the rickety chair opposite him. Wallander pointed to the papers on his desk.

“Do you have anything to say about this?” he asked.

“Is it the taxi-driver case?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve talked to the older girl, Sonja Hökberg. She gave me clear and strong answers, answered everything. And seemed completely without remorse. The other girl has been in custody with the social-welfare people because of her youth.”

“Do you understand it?”

Höglund paused before answering.

“Yes and no. We already know that very young people are committing serious crimes these days.”

“Forgive me, but I can’t recall a previous case involving teenage girls attacking anyone with knives and hammers. Were they drunk?”

“No. But I don’t know if that should surprise us. Maybe what should surprise us is that something like this didn’t happen sooner.”

Wallander leaned over the table.

“You’ll have to run that last part by me again.”

“I don’t know if I can explain it.”

“Give it a try.”

“Women aren’t needed in the workforce anymore. That era is over.”

“But that doesn’t explain why young girls have started assaulting taxi drivers.”

“There has to be something more to it that we don’t know. Neither one of us believes in the idea that people are born evil.”

Wallander shook his head.

“I try to hang on to that belief,” he said, “though at times it’s a challenge.”

“Just look at the magazines these young girls are reading. Now it’s all about beauty again, nothing else. How to get a boyfriend and find meaning for life through his interests and dreams, that sort of thing.”

“Weren’t they always like that?”

“No. Think about your own daughter. Didn’t she have her own ideas about what to do with her life?”

Wallander knew she was right. But he shook his head doubtfully anyway.

“I just don’t know why they attacked Lundberg.”

“But you should. Young girls are slowly starting to see through the messages society sends them. When they figure out they aren’t needed, that in fact they’re superfluous, they react just as violently as boys. And go on to commit crimes, among other things.”

Wallander was quiet. He now understood the point Höglund had been trying to make.

“I don’t think I can do a better job of explaining it,” she said. “Don’t you think you should talk to them yourself?”

“Martinsson already suggested it.”

“Actually, I stopped by for another reason. I need your help on something.”

Wallander waited for her to continue.

“I promised to give a talk to a local women’s club here in Ystad. They’re meeting Thursday evening. But I don’t feel up to it anymore. There’s too much going on in my life, and I can’t seem to focus.”

Wallander knew she was in the middle of agonizing divorce proceedings. Her ex-husband was constantly away due to his work as a machinery installer, which sent him all over the world. That meant the process was dragging on. It was over a year ago now that she had first told Wallander about the marriage ending.

“Why don’t you see if Martinsson can do it?” Wallander said. “You know I’m hopeless at lectures.”

“You would just have to tell them what it’s like to be a police officer,” she said. “And you’d only need to speak for half an hour to an audience of about thirty women. They’ll love you.”

Wallander shook his head firmly.

“Martinsson would be more than happy to do it,” he said. “And he has experience in politics, so he’s used to this kind of thing.”

“I already asked him. He can’t do it.”

“Holgersson?”

“Same. There’s just you.”

“What about Hansson?”

“He would start talking about horse racing after a few minutes. He’s hopeless.”

Wallander realized he would have to say yes. He couldn’t leave her in the lurch.

“What kind of women’s club?”

“It started as a book club, I think, that grew into a society for intellectual and literary activity. They’ve been active for about ten years.”

“And I would be there to talk to them about what it’s like to be a police officer?”

“That’s all. They’ll probably ask you questions, too.”

“Well, I don’t want to do it, but I will since you’re in a bind.”

She was clearly relieved and pulled out a piece of paper.

“Here’s the name and number of the contact person.”

Wallander glanced at the note. The address was a building in the middle of town, not too far from where he lived. Höglund got to her feet.

“They won’t pay you anything,” she said. “But you’ll get plenty of coffee and cake.”

“I don’t eat cake.”

“If it’s any consolation, this kind of public service is exactly what the National Chief of Police wants us to be doing. You know how we’re always getting those memos about finding new ways of reaching out to the community.”

Wallander thought briefly about asking her how she was doing in her personal life, but decided to let it pass. If she had any problems she wanted to discuss with him, she would have to be the one to bring them up.

“Weren’t you going to attend Stefan Fredman’s funeral?”

“I was just there. And it was exactly as depressing as you might imagine.”

“How is the mother doing? I can’t remember her name.”

“Anette. She’s certainly been dealt a bum hand in life. But I think she’s taking good care of the one child she has left. Or trying to, at any rate.”

“We’ll have to wait and see.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“What’s the boy’s name?”

“Jens.”

“We’ll have to wait and see if the name Jens Fredman starts popping up in our police reports in about ten years.”

Wallander nodded. There was certainly that possibility.

Höglund left the room. Wallander got up to get a fresh cup of coffee. The young police officers were no longer in the lunchroom. Wallander walked over to Martinsson’s office. The door was wide open, but the room was empty. Wallander returned to his office. His headache was gone. He looked out of the window. Some blackbirds were screeching over by the water tower. He tried to count them, but there were too many.

The phone rang and he answered without sitting down at his desk. It was someone calling from the bookstore to let him know that the book he had ordered had come in. Wallander couldn’t recall ordering a book, but he said nothing. He promised to stop by and pick it up the following day.

It was as he was putting the phone down that he remembered what the book was. It was a present for Linda. A French book on restoring antique furniture. Wallander had read about it in some magazine he had picked up at the doctor’s office. He was still convinced that Linda would return to her original idea of restoring furniture for a living, despite her subsequent experimentation with other careers. He had ordered the book and promptly forgotten about it. He pushed his coffee cup aside and decided he would call her later that evening. It had been several weeks since they had talked.

Martinsson walked into the room. He was always in a hurry and seldom knocked. Over the years Wallander had become more and more impressed by Martinsson’s abilities as a police officer. His real weakness was that he would probably rather be doing something else. There had been several times in the past few years that he had seriously considered quitting. The most serious phase was spurred by an attack on his daughter at school. The offenders claimed it was for no reason other than that she was the daughter of a cop. That had been enough to push him over the edge. But Wallander had eventually been able to talk him out of leaving the job. Martinsson’s greatest strengths were that he was both stubborn and sharp. But his stubborness was sometimes replaced by a certain impatience, and then his sharp wits were not enough. From time to time he turned out sloppy background reports.

Martinsson leaned against the door frame.

“I tried to call you,” he said. “But your phone isn’t turned on.”

“I was in church,” Wallander said. “I forgot to turn it on again.”

“At Stefan’s funeral?”

Wallander repeated the phrase he had told Höglund, that it was just as depressing as he could imagine.

Martinsson gestured to the folder on his table.

“I’ve read it,” Wallander said. “And I still don’t understand what drove these girls to pick up a hammer and a knife and attack someone like that.”

“It says it right there,” Martinsson said. “They needed the money.”

“But why such violent methods? How is he, anyway?”

“Lundberg?”

“Who else?”

“He’s still unconscious and in critical condition. They promised to call if there was any change. The prognosis doesn’t look so good, though.”

“Do you understand any of this?”

Martinsson sat down.

“No,” he said, “I certainly don’t. And I’m not so sure I want to.”

“But we have to. If we’re going to do our jobs, that is.” Martinsson looked at Wallander.

“You know how I feel on that subject. Last time you managed to talk me out of quitting. Next time I’m not so sure you will. It won’t be as easy, that’s for sure.”

Martinsson might be right. It was a thought that worried Wallander. He didn’t want to lose Martinsson as a colleague, just as he didn’t want to see Höglund turn up in his office with her pink slip.

“Maybe we should go talk to this girl, Sonja Hökberg,” Wallander said.

“One more thing.”

Wallander sat back down in his chair. Martinsson had a few papers in his hand.

“I want you to look this over. The events occurred last night. I was on duty and saw no reason to get you out of bed.”

“What happened?”

Martinsson scratched his forehead.

“A night patrolman called in around one o’clock saying that there was a dead man lying in front of one of the cash machines next to that big department store downtown.”

“Which department store?”

“The one right next to the tax authority.”

Wallander nodded in recognition.

“We drove out to take a look and confirm the report. According to the doctor the man hadn’t been dead very long, a few hours at most. We’ll get the autopsy report in a few days, of course.”

“What happened?”

“That’s the question. He had an ugly wound on his head, but whether somebody hit him or whether he injured himself by falling to the ground, I don’t know. We couldn’t tell.”

“Was he robbed?”

“His wallet was still there, with money in it.”

Wallander thought for a moment.

“Any witnesses?”

“No.”

“Who was he?”

Martinsson looked in his papers.

“His name was Tynnes Falk. He was forty-seven years old and lived nearby. He was renting the top floor apartment in a building at number ten Apelbergsgatan.”

Wallander raised his hand to stop Martinsson.

“Number ten Apelbergsgatan?”

“That’s right.”

Wallander nodded slowly. A couple of years ago, right after his divorce from Mona, he had met a woman during a night of dancing at the Hotel Saltsjöbaden. Wallander had been very drunk. He had gone home with her and woken up the next morning in a strange bed next to a woman he could hardly recognize. He had no idea what her name was. He had quickly thrown his clothes on and left and never met her again. But for some reason he was sure she had lived at 10 Apelbergsgatan.

“Do you recognize the address?” Martinsson asked.

“I just didn’t hear you.”

Martinsson looked at him with surprise.

“Was I mumbling?”

“Please continue.”

“He was single — divorced, actually. His ex-wife still lives in town, but their children are scattered all over the place. One boy is nineteen and is studying in Stockholm. The girl is seventeen and is working as a nanny at an embassy in Paris. The wife has been notified of his death.”

“Who did he work with?”

“He appears to have worked for himself. Some kind of computer consultant.”

“And he wasn’t robbed?”

“No, but he had just requested his account balance from the cash machine before he died. He was still holding the slip in his hand when we found him.”

“So he hadn’t made a withdrawal?”

“Not according to the printed receipt.”

“Strange. The most reasonable thing to assume would be that someone was waiting for him to withdraw money and then strike when he had the cash.”

“That occurred to me as well, of course, but the last time he made a withdrawal was on Saturday, and that wasn’t a large sum.”

Martinsson handed Wallander a small plastic bag containing the blood-spattered bank receipt. It had recorded the time as being two minutes past midnight. He handed it back to Martinsson.

“What does Nyberg say?”

“That nothing apart from the head wound points to a crime. He probably suffered a heart attack.”

“Perhaps he had been expecting to see a higher amount than the one on the printout,” Wallander said thoughtfully.

He stood up.

“Let’s wait for the autopsy report. Until then we’ll assume no crime was committed, so put it aside for now.”

Martinsson gathered up his papers.

“I’ll contact the lawyer who was assigned to Hökberg. I’ll let you know when he can be expected down here so you can talk to her.”

“Not that I want to,” Wallander said. “But I guess I should.” Martinsson left the room and Wallander walked to the bathroom. He thought gratefully that at least his days of running to the bathroom due to elevated blood sugar were over.

For an hour he kept working on the smuggled cigarettes while the thought of the favor he had agreed to do for Höglund nagged at the back of his mind.

Two minutes past four Martinsson called to say that Sonja Hökberg and her lawyer were ready.

“Who is he?” Wallander asked.

“Herman Lötberg.”

Wallander knew him. He was an older man who was easy to work with.

“I’ll be there in five minutes,” Wallander said and hung up.

He walked back over to the window. The blackbirds were gone and the wind had picked up. He thought about Anette Fredman and the little boy who had played so quietly on the floor. He thought about the boy’s frightened eyes. Then he shook his head and tried to work out the questions he was going to ask Sonja Hökberg. From Martinsson’s notes he learned she was the one who had sat in the back seat and hit Lundberg in the head with a hammer. There had been many blows, not just one. As if she had been in a blind rage.

Wallander grabbed a notebook and pen and left. When he was halfway there, he realized that he had left his glasses. He walked back.

There’s really only one question, he thought as he returned to the conference room.

Why did they do it?

Their statement about needing money isn’t enough.

There’s another answer somewhere, a deeper answer that I have to find.

Chapter Four

Sonja Hökberg did not look anything like Wallander had expected. Afterward he couldn’t quite recall what he had been expecting, but he knew it wasn’t the person he had met in that room. Sonja Hökberg was seated when he came in. She was small and thin, almost to the point of transparency. She had shoulder-length blond hair and blue eyes. She could have been a poster child for innocence and purity. Nothing indicated that she was a crazed hammer-wielding murderer.

Wallander had been met by her lawyer outside the room.

“She’s very much in control of herself,” he said to Wallander. “But I’m not convinced she understands the gravity of the charges she’s facing.”

“It’s not a matter of accusation; she’s guilty,” Martinsson said firmly.

“What about the hammer,” Wallander asked. “Have we found it?”

“She put it under her bed. She hadn’t even tried to wipe the blood off. The other girl got rid of her knife. We’re still searching for it.”

Martinsson left. Wallander stepped into the room with the lawyer. The girl looked at them expectantly. She didn’t seem nervous at all. Wallander nodded to her and sat down. There was a tape recorder on the table. Wallander looked at her for a long time. She looked back.

“Do you have any gum?” she asked finally.

Wallander shook his head and looked over at Lötberg, who also shook his head.

“We’ll see if we can get you some later,” Wallander said and turned on the tape recorder. “But first we’re going to have a little chat.”

“I’ve already said what happened. Why can’t I have some gum? I can pay for it,” she said and held up a black purse with an oak-leaf clasp. Wallander was surprised that it hadn’t been confiscated. “I won’t talk until I get my gum.”

Wallander reached over for the phone and called the reception desk. Ebba will take care of this, he thought. It wasn’t until an unfamiliar woman’s voice came on the line that he remembered that Ebba was retired now. Even though she had been gone for six months, Wallander had still not grown used to the new receptionist. She was a woman in her thirties named Irene. She had previously worked as an administrative assistant in a doctor’s office, and she had already become well-liked at the police station. But Wallander missed Ebba.

“I need some gum,” Wallander said. “Do you know anyone who would have any?”

“Yes,” Irene said. “Me.”

Wallander hung up and walked out to the reception desk.

“Is it for the girl?” Irene asked.

“Fast thinker,” Wallander said.

He returned to the examination room, gave Sonja Hökberg the stick of gum, and realized he had forgotten to turn off the tape recorder through all of this.

“Let’s begin,” he said. “It’s a quarter past four on October sixth, 1997. Kurt Wallander is questioning Sonja Hökberg.”

“So do I have to tell you everything all over again?” she asked.

“Yes. Try to speak clearly and direct your words at the mike.”

“What about the fact that I’ve already told you everything?”

“I may have some additional questions.”

“I don’t feel like going over it again.”

For a moment Wallander felt thrown by her total lack of anxiety.

“Unfortunately you’ll just have to cooperate,” he said. “You have been accused of a very serious crime, and what’s more, you have confessed. Right now you stand accused of assault in the third degree, but this already serious charge may be upgraded to something worse if the taxi driver’s condition deteriorates further.”

Lötberg gave Wallander a disapproving look but didn’t say anything.

Wallander started at the beginning.

“Your name is Sonja Hökberg and you were born on February second, 1978.”

“That makes me an Aquarius. What’s your sign?”

“That doesn’t concern us at present. You’re here to answer my questions and that is all. Understand?”

“Do I look stupid?”

“You live with your parents at twelve Trastvagen, here in Ystad.”

“Yes.”

“You have a younger brother, Emil, born in 1982.”

“He’s the one who should be sitting in this chair, not me.”

Wallander raised his eyebrows.

“Why do you say that?”

“He never leaves my things alone. He’s always looking through my stuff. We fight a lot.”

“I’m sure it can be trying to have a younger brother, but let’s leave it for now.”

She’s still so composed, Wallander thought. Her nonchalance was starting to irritate him.

“Can you describe the events of last Tuesday evening?”

“It’s such a drag to have to tell the same thing twice.”

“That can’t be helped. You and Eva Persson went out that evening?”

“There’s nothing to do around here. I wish I lived in Moscow.” Wallander regarded her with surprise. Even Lötberg seemed startled.

“Why Moscow?”

“I just saw somewhere that exciting things often happen there. Have you ever been to Moscow?”

“No. Just answer my questions. So, you went out that night.”

“You already know that.”

“Were you and Eva good friends?”

“Why else would we have gone out together? Do I seem like the kind of person who would go out with people she didn’t like?”

For the first time Wallander thought he could detect a note of emotion in her voice. Impatience.

“How long have you known each other?”

“Not very long.”

“How long?”

“A few years.”

“She’s five years younger than you are.”

“She looks up to me.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“She’s told me so herself. She looks up to me.”

“Why is that?”

“You’ll have to ask her yourself.”

I will, Wallander thought. I have a lot of things to ask her.

“Can you tell me what happened that night?”

“Jesus Christ!”

“You have to, whether you want to or not. We can stay here all night if we have to.”

“We had a beer.”

“Even though Eva Persson is only fourteen?”

“She looks older.”

“Then what happened?”

“We ordered another beer.”

“And after that?”

“We called a cab. But you know all this. Why do you keep asking?”

“Had you already decided to attack this taxi driver?”

“We needed the money.”

“For what?”

“Nothing in particular.”

“Let me see if I have this straight: you needed money, but not for anything in particular.”

“Right.”

No, that’s not right, Wallander thought. He had noticed a note of insecurity in her answer. He immediately grew more attentive.

“Normally, when you need money it’s for something in particular.”

“Not in our case.”

Oh, yes it was, Wallander thought. But he decided to leave the matter for now.

“How did you come up with the idea of robbing a taxi driver?”

“We talked about it.”

“At the restaurant?”

“Yes.”

“So you hadn’t talked about it earlier?”

“Why would we have done that?”

Lötberg was staring down into his hands.

“Would it be correct to say that you had no intention of assaulting the taxi driver before you went to the restaurant? Whose idea was it?”

“It was mine.”

“Eva had no objections?”

“No.”

This doesn’t hang together, Wallander thought. She’s lying, but she’s remarkably collected.

“You ordered the taxi from the restaurant, then waited until it arrived. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“But where did the hammer and knife come from? If you hadn’t planned the attack in advance, I mean.”

Sonja Hökberg looked steadily into Wallander’s eyes.

“I always carry a hammer with me,” she said. “And Eva always has a knife.”

“Why?”

“You never know what’s going to happen.”

“What do you mean?”

“The streets are full of crazy people. You have to be able to defend yourself.”

“So you mean to say you always go out with this hammer in your purse?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever used it before?”

Lötberg looked up.

“That question bears no relevance to this case,” he said.

“What does that mean?” Sonja Hökberg asked.

“Relevance? That he has no business asking that question.”

“I can answer anyway. I had never used the hammer before. But Eva cut someone once. Some creep who was trying to feel her up.”

Wallander was struck by a sudden thought and veered away from his earlier line of questioning.

“Did you meet anyone at that restaurant? Had you made a date with anyone?”

“No.”

“You don’t have a boyfriend?”

“No.”

That answer came a Little too quickly, Wallander thought. He made a mental note of it.

“The taxi came and you left.”

“Yes.”

“What did you do then?”

“What do you think? We told him where we wanted to go.”

“And you said you wanted to be driven out to Rydsgård. Why?”

“I don’t know. We had to say something and that was the first thing that came to mind.”

“Eva sat up front with the driver, and you sat in the backseat. Did you decide on that beforehand?”

“That was the plan.”

“What plan?”

“That we would get the driver to stop because Eva wanted to get in the back seat with me. And that’s when we were going to get him.”

“So you had already decided to use your weapons?”

“Not if he had been younger.”

“What would you have done then?”

“Then we would have got him to stop by pulling up our skirts and being suggestive.”

Wallander noticed he had started to sweat. Her obvious detachment from the situation was starting to get to him.

“Suggesting what exactly?”

“What do you think?”

“You would entice him into thinking he could have sex with you?”

“You dirty old fuck.”

Lötberg leaned forward.

“You should watch your language.”

Sonja Hökberg looked over at him.

“I’ll use whatever language I please.”

Lötberg sat back again. Wallander decided to move on.

“But, as it happened, the taxi driver was an older man. You got him to stop. Then what?”

“I hit him in the head. Eva stabbed him with the knife.”

“How many times did you strike him?”

“I don’t know. A couple of times. I wasn’t counting.”

“You weren’t afraid of killing him?”

“We needed the money.”

“That wasn’t what I was asking. What I want to know is, were you aware that the wounds you were inflicting could be fatal?”

Sonja Hökberg shrugged. Wallander waited but she didn’t say anything. He didn’t feel he had the energy to repeat the last question.

“You say you needed money. For what?”

“Nothing in particular. I told you.”

“Then what happened?”

“We took his wallet and the cell phone and walked home.”

“What happened to the wallet?”

“We divided up the cash. Then Eva threw it away somewhere.”

Wallander looked briefly through Martinsson’s notes. Johan Lundberg had been carrying around 600 kronor. They had found the wallet in a wastepaper basket after getting directions from Eva Persson. Sonja Hökberg had taken the cell phone. The police had found it in her bedroom.

Wallander turned off the tape recorder. Sonja Hökberg followed his movements with her eyes.

“Can I go home now?”

“No, as a matter of fact,” Wallander said. “You are nineteen years old and that means you count as an adult in our courts. You have committed a felony, and you will be formally arraigned.”

“And that means?”

“You’ll have to stay here at the station.”

“Why?”

Wallander looked at Lötberg, then stood up.

“I think your attorney can probably explain it to you.”

Wallander left the room. He felt sick to his stomach. Sonja Hökberg had not been putting on an act in there. She had no sense of wrongdoing. Wallander walked into Martinsson’s office and sat down in a chair. Martinsson was on the phone but gestured that he would be off soon. While Wallander waited he felt a strong urge to smoke. That almost never happened. But his meeting with Sonja Hökberg had been unusually disturbing.

Martinsson put the phone down.

“How did it go?”

“She confessed to everything. She’s as cold as ice.”

“Eva Persson is the same way and she’s only fourteen.”

Wallander looked at Martinsson with something like pleading in his eyes.

“What’s happening to the world?”

“I don’t know.”

Wallander was visibly shaken.

“They’re just young girls.”

“I know, I know. And they have no remorse at all.”

They were silent for a while and Wallander felt completely empty inside. Martinsson was the one who finally spoke.

“Do you understand now why I think of quitting so often?”

Wallander roused himself.

“And do you understand why it’s so important that you don’t?”

He got up and walked over to the window.

“How is Lundberg?”

“Still in critical condition.”

“We have to get to the bottom of this, whether or not he dies. They didn’t assault him like that just to get some cash. Either they needed the money for a specific purpose or the attack was about something else entirely.”

“What could that have been?”

“I don’t know. It’s just a feeling that there’s something deeper behind all this.”

“Isn’t the most probable scenario that they were a little drunk and concocted this mad plan to get some money? Without thinking of the consequences?”

“Why do you think that?”

“I’m just sure it wasn’t a random act, like you said.”

Wallander nodded.

“Well, we agree on that. But I want to know what their reasons were. Tomorrow I’ll talk to Eva Persson, as well as her parents. Does either of them have a boyfriend?”

“Eva Persson said she had someone.”

“Not Hökberg?”

“No.”

“Then she’s lying. She has someone and we’ll find him.”

Martinsson made some notes.

“Who will take that on — you or me?”

Wallander’s response was immediate.

“I’ll do it. I want to know what’s going on in this country.”

“Suits me fine.”

“You’re not completely off the hook, though. Not you, nor Hansson, nor Höglund. We have to find out the real reason for this attack. I’m convinced it was an attempted homicide, and if Lundberg dies, then it’s murder.”

Wallander returned to his office. It was half past five and already it was dark outside. He thought about Sonja Hökberg and why the two girls had needed money so badly. Had there been another reason entirely? Then he thought of Anette Fredman.

He still had work to do but felt he couldn’t bear to stay in his office. He grabbed his coat and left. The sharp fall wind burned his face. He heard the strange engine noise again when he started the car. As he turned out of the parking lot, he decided to go shopping. His refrigerator was almost empty except for the bottle of champagne that he had won in a bet with Hansson. He could no longer remember what the bet had been. On an impulse he thought he would swing by the cash machine where the man had died the night before. He could do his shopping in one of the department stores nearby.

After parking the car, he walked up to the ATM and waited while a woman with a baby in a stroller withdrew some money. The concrete pavement was rough and uneven. Wallander looked around. There seemed to be no residential buildings nearby. In the middle of the night the plaza would be quite deserted. Even in the powerful streetlights, a man could scream and collapse onto the ground without anyone hearing or seeing him.

Wallander went into the nearest department store and found the food market. As usual, he found himself plagued by boredom and indecision as he inspected the shelves. He quickly filled up his basket with an assortment of items, paid, and left. When he started the car again, the mystery engine-noise seemed to increase. He took off his dark suit as soon as he was back in his apartment. He showered and noted that he was almost out of soap. He made some vegetable soup for dinner that tasted surprisingly good. He brewed some coffee, and took a cup out with him into the living room. He was tired. He flipped the channels without finding anything interesting, then reached for the phone and called Linda in Stockholm. She was sharing an apartment in Kungsholmen with two women he only knew by name. To make ends meet, she sometimes worked as a waitress in a nearby restaurant. Wallander had eaten dinner there the last time he was in town and had enjoyed the food. But he was surprised she could stand the music, which was oppressively loud.

Linda was twenty-six years old now. They had a good relationship, but he missed being able to see her regularly.

An answering machine came on. Neither Linda nor any of her roommates was home. The message was repeated in English. Wallander said who he was and that it wasn’t anything important.

He put the phone down and stared down at his coffee. It was cold. I can’t keep living like this, he thought irritatedly. I’m only fifty years old, but I feel ancient and weak.

He knew he should go for an evening walk and tried desperately to think of an excuse not to. Finally he put his sneakers on and headed out.

It was half past eight when he returned. The walk had cleared his mind and he no longer felt as dispirited as before.

The phone rang, and Wallander thought it must be Linda. But it was Martinsson.

“Lundberg has died. They just called from the hospital.”

Wallander was silent.

“That means Hökberg and Persson have committed murder,” Martinsson said.

“I know,” Wallander said, “and we have a hell of a mess on our hands.”

They decided to meet at eight o’clock the next morning.

There was nothing more to say.

Wallander stayed in front of the television and absentmindedly watched a news program. The dollar had gained more ground against the krona. The only story that managed to grab his attention was the piece on an insurance company, Trustor. It seemed bafflingly easy these days to drain the resources of an entire corporation without anyone catching on until it was too late.

Linda didn’t call back. Wallander went to bed around eleven o’clock.

It took him a long time to fall asleep.

Chapter Five

Wallander woke up with a sore throat shortly after six o’clock on Tuesday, the seventh of October. He was sweating lightly and he knew it meant he was starting to come down with the flu. He stayed in bed for a while and debated whether or not he should stay home, but the thought of Johan Lundberg’s death forced him up. He showered, drank some coffee, and swallowed some pills to reduce his fever. He tucked the bottle of pills into his pocket. Then, before heading out, he forced himself to eat a bowl of yogurt. The street lamp outside the kitchen window was swaying in the gusty wind. It was overcast and only a couple of degrees above freezing. Wallander rummaged around in his closet for a thick sweater. Then he put his hand on the phone and debated whether he should call Linda. It was too early. When he reached street level and was about to get in his car, he remembered that he had left a to-do list on the kitchen table. There was something on the list that he had been planning to buy today but he couldn’t recall what it was. He decided he didn’t have the energy to go get it.

Wallander took his usual route to the office, driving along the Osterled. Each time he drove this way he felt guilty. He knew he should be out there walking to work, in order to keep his blood sugar at a healthy level. And even today he wasn’t so weak from the flu that he couldn’t have walked.

He parked outside the station and was in his office as the clock struck seven. Sitting at his desk, he suddenly remembered the item he had forgotten to buy. Soap. He immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper. Then he turned his thoughts to the case.

Some of the unpleasant feelings from the day before returned. He recalled Sonja Hökberg’s complete lack of emotion. He tried to convince himself that she did in fact exhibit some signs of compassion that he simply had not been able to pick up, but to no avail. His experience in these matters told him he had not been mistaken. He got up and went to get a cup of coffee from the lunchroom. Since Martinsson was also an early riser, Wallander stopped by his office. As usual, the door was open. Wallander had often wondered how Martinsson got any work done. Wallander couldn’t concentrate unless his door was bolted shut.

Martinsson nodded when Wallander stopped in the doorway.

“I thought you’d be here,” he said.

“I don’t feel so well today,” Wallander said.

“A cold?”

“I always get a sore throat in October.”

Martinsson, who always worried about getting sick, pulled his chair back a couple of inches.

“You could have stayed home today,” he said. “This depressing Lundberg case is already solved.”

“Only partially,” Wallander objected. “We still don’t have a motive. I don’t believe that line that they needed extra money for nothing in particular. Have you found the knife yet?”

“Nyberg’s in charge of that. I haven’t talked to him yet.”

“Call him.”

Martinsson made a face.

“He’s not easy to talk to in the morning.”

“Then I’ll call him myself.”

Wallander reached for Martinsson’s phone and tried Nyberg’s home number. After a few moments he was automatically transferred to a cell phone. Nyberg answered, but it was a poor connection.

“It’s Kurt. I just wanted to know if you’ve found the knife yet.”

“How the hell are we supposed to find anything in the dark?” Nyberg answered angrily.

“I thought Eva Persson said where she had left it.”

“We still have an area of several hundred cubic meters to comb. She just said she threw it somewhere in the Old Cemetery.”

“Why don’t you have someone bring her down?”

“If it’s here, we’ll find it,” Nyberg said.

They ended the conversation.

“I didn’t sleep well last night,” Martinsson said. “My daughter Terese knows Eva Persson. They’re almost the same age. And Eva Persson has parents too. What are they going through right now? From what I understand, Eva is their only child.”

They both thought about what he had said. Then Wallander started a series of sneezes. Martinsson left quickly. The conversation was left hanging.

They gathered in one of the conference rooms at eight o’clock. Wallander sat in his usual spot at the end of the table. Hansson and Höglund were already there. Martinsson was standing by the window talking to someone on the phone, most likely his wife. Wallander had always wondered how they could have so much to say to each other after having had breakfast together only an hour before. The main feeling in the room was despondence. Lisa Holgersson walked in and Martinsson finished his conversation. Hansson got up and shut the door.

“Isn’t Nyberg supposed to be here?” he asked.

“He’s looking for the knife,” Wallander said. “I think we can assume he’ll find it.”

Then he looked over at Holgersson, who nodded at him. He could start the meeting. He wondered briefly how many times he had found himself in exactly this situation. Up early in the morning, facing his colleagues across the conference table with a crime to solve.

They were waiting for him to begin.

“Johan Lundberg is now dead,” he said. “In case anyone hasn’t heard the latest.”

He pointed to a copy of the local newspaper, the Ystad Allehanda, that was lying on the table. The taxi driver’s death was announced in huge print on the first page.

Wallander continued. “This means the two girls, Hökberg and Persson, are charged with murder. We can’t call it anything else, since Hökberg in particular was so precise in her explanations. They planned this and were carrying weapons. They were going to attack whichever taxi driver came their way. We’ve recovered the hammer, as well as Lundberg’s empty wallet and his cell phone. The only thing missing is the knife. Neither one of the girls has denied the charges, nor shifted the blame to the other. I’m assuming we can hand the matter over to the district attorney tomorrow at the latest. Since Eva Persson is so young, her case will be handled by the juvenile courts. The autopsy results aren’t in yet, but I think we can say that our role in this unfortunate case is as good as over.”

Wallander finished and waited to see if anyone had anything to say. “Why did they do it?” Lisa Holgersson finally asked. “It seems so unnecessary.”

Wallander nodded. He had hoped someone would ask this question so he wouldn’t have to find a way to pose it himself.

“Sonja Hökberg was very firm on this point,” he said. “Both in her session with Martinsson and later with me. She said, ‘We needed the money.’ Nothing else.”

“What for?”

Hansson asked the last question.

“We don’t know why. They won’t tell us. If Hökberg is to be believed, they didn’t even know why themselves. They just wanted money.”

Wallander looked around the table before he continued.

“I don’t think they’re telling the truth. At the very least, I know Hökberg is lying. I haven’t yet spoken with Eva Persson, but I’m still convinced of it. They needed that money for something in particular. I also have the suspicion that Persson was doing what Hökberg told her to. That doesn’t make her any less guilty, but I think it gives a clearer picture of their relationship.”

“Does it even matter?” Höglund asked. “Whether they needed the money for clothes or something else?”

“I guess not, at this point. The district attorney certainly has enough evidence to convict Hökberg.”

“They’ve never been in trouble with us before,” Martinsson said. “I made a quick search of our database. And they were both doing well in school.”

Wallander again had the feeling that they were taking the wrong approach to the case. Or at the very least, that they had been overly hasty in writing off other explanations for Lundberg’s murder. But since he was unable to put this hunch into words, he said nothing. They still had a lot of work to do, and the reason for the murder could very well have to do with money. They simply had to keep their eyes open for other possibilities.

The phone rang and Hansson picked up. After listening for a moment he put the receiver down.

“That was Nyberg,” he said. “They found the knife.”

Wallander nodded and shut the folder lying in front of him.

“Naturally, we still need to speak to the parents and make sure we conduct a thorough background investigation, but I think we can safely forward the preliminary information to the district attorney’s office.”

Lisa Holgersson raised her hand to speak.

“We need to hold a press conference. We’ve been barraged by calls from the media. It is still unusual for two young girls to commit this kind of violent crime.”

Wallander looked over at Höglund, but she shook her head. In the past few years, she had often taken on the task of talking to the media, a job he thoroughly despised. But not this time. Wallander understood.

“I’ll do it,” he said. “Do we have a time?”

“I’m going to suggest one o’clock.”

Wallander made a note of it.

They divided up the tasks and brought the meeting to a close. Everyone wanted the matter disposed of as quickly as possible. It was a particularly wretched case, and no one wanted to spend more time on it than was necessary. Wallander would pay a visit to the Hökberg family. Martinsson and Höglund would talk to Eva Persson and her parents.

Soon the room was empty. Wallander could feel the symptoms of his flu getting worse. At least maybe I’ll infect a journalist, he thought as he dug around in his pockets for a tissue.

He bumped into Nyberg in the hallway. Nyberg was wearing boots and a warm coat, his hair splayed in all directions. He was clearly in a bad mood.

“I heard you found the knife,” Wallander said.

“Looks like the county can no longer afford to pay for basic upkeep,” Nyberg answered. “We were shin-deep in leaves. But we finally found it.”

“What kind of a knife?”

“Kitchen knife. Fairly big. The tip broke off, probably from hitting a rib, so she must have used a surprising amount of force. But then again, it was a cheap knife.”

Wallander shook his head.

“It’s hard to believe,” Nyberg said. “I don’t know what happened to the basic respect for human life. How much money did they get?”

“We don’t know yet, but probably around six hundred kronor. It couldn’t have been much more. Lundberg was at the beginning of his shift, and he never carried a lot of change to start.”

Nyberg muttered something under his breath and walked off. Wallander returned to his office. For a while he sat in his chair without knowing what to do next. His throat hurt. Finally he opened the folder with a sigh. Sonja Hökberg lived to the west of Ystad. He wrote down the address, got up, and put on his coat. As he was leaving, the phone rang. He picked up. It was Linda. The voices and clatter in the background made him think she was calling from the restaurant.

“I got your message this morning,” she said.

“This morning?”

“I wasn’t at home last night.”

Wallander knew better than to ask her where she had spent the night. It would only make her get angry and slam down the phone.

“Well, I didn’t call for any particular reason,” he said. “I just wanted to know how you were doing.”

“Good. How about you?’

“I’ve got a little cold. Otherwise things are the same. I was wondering if you had any plans to come down and visit soon.”

“I don’t have time.”

“I’m happy to pay your fare.”

“I told you, I don’t have time. It’s not about the money.”

Wallander realized he would not be able to change her mind. She was as stubborn as he was.

“How are you doing, anyway?” she asked again. “Do you have any contact with Baiba these days?”

“That ended a long time ago. You know that.”

“It’s not good for you to go on like this.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You know what I mean. You’re even starting to get a whiny tone in your voice. You never had that before.”

“You think I sound whiny?”

“You’re doing it right now. But I have a suggestion. I think you should contact a dating service.”

“A dating service?”

“Where you can find someone. Otherwise you’re going to turn into a whiny old man who worries about where I’m spending my nights.”

She sees right through me, he thought. I’m an open book.

“You mean I should put an ad in the paper?”

“Yes, or use one of those agencies.”

“I’ll never do that.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t believe in them.”

“And why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, it was just a suggestion. Think it over. I have to get back to work.”

“Where are you?”

“At the restaurant. We open soon.”

They said goodbye and hung up. Wallander wondered where she had spent the night. A couple of years ago, Linda had been involved with a young man from Kenya who was in medical school in Lund. But that had ended. After that, he had not known very much at all about who she was dating, other than that every so often she started seeing someone new. He felt an unpleasant pinch of irritation and jealousy. Then he left the room. The thought of putting in a personal ad or getting in touch with a dating service had actually occurred to him before. But he had always rejected the idea. It was as if that would mean sinking to an unacceptable level of desperation.

The strong wind chilled him as soon as he walked outside. He got in his car and started the engine, listening to the strange noises that were only getting worse. Then he drove out to the townhouse where the Hökbergs lived. Martinsson’s report had only given him the information that Sonja Hökberg’s father was “self-employed.” He still didn’t know what that actually meant. Wallander got out of the car. The small patch of garden in the front was neat and tidy. He rang the doorbell. After a moment a man came to the door. Wallander knew at once that they had met before. He had a good memory for faces. But he didn’t know when or where it had been. The man had also immediately recognized Wallander.

“It’s you,” he said. “I knew the police would be coming out, but I didn’t expect it to be you.”

He stepped aside to let Wallander enter. Wallander heard the sound of a TV coming from somewhere. He still had not managed to figure out where he had met this man before.

“I take it you remember me?” Hökberg asked.

“Yes,” Wallander said. “But I have to say I’m having trouble placing you in the right context.”

“ ‘Erik Hokberg’ doesn’t ring a bell?”

Wallander searched his memory. “I don’t think so.”

“What about ‘Sten Widen’?”

Suddenly Wallander remembered. Sten Widen, with his horse farm in Stjarnsund. And Erik. The three of them had once shared a passion for the opera. Sten had been the most deeply involved, but Erik was a childhood friend of his and they had often sat around the record player as they listened to Verdi’s operas.

“Yes, I remember now,” Wallander said. “But your name wasn’t Hökberg then, was it?”

“I took my wife’s name. As a boy I was called Erik Eriksson.”

Erik Hökberg was a large man. The coat hanger he held out to Wallander looked small in his hand. Wallander remembered him as thin, but now he was of substantial proportions. That must have been why it had been so hard to put two and two together.

Wallander hung up his coat and followed Hökberg into the living room. There was a TV in the middle of the room, but it was turned off. The sound was coming from another room. They sat down. Wallander tried to think of how to start off.

“It’s horrible what’s happened,” Hökberg said. “Naturally I have no idea what got into her.”

“Had she ever been violent before?”

“Never.”

“What about your wife? Is she home?”

Hökberg had collapsed into a heap in his chair. Behind the rolls of fat in his face Wallander thought he could sense the outline of another face from a time that now seemed endlessly distant.

“She took Emil and went to her sister in Höör. She couldn’t stand to stay here. The reporters kept calling. They show no mercy. They called in the middle of the night, some of them.”

“I’m afraid I have to speak to her.”

“I know. I told her the police would come by.”

Wallander wasn’t sure how to proceed.

“You and your wife must have talked about what happened.”

“She doesn’t understand it any more than I do. It was a complete shock.”

“You have a good relationship with Sonja?”

“There have never been any problems.”

“And between her and her mother?”

“Same. They’ve had fights from time to time but only stuff you would expect. Nothing else, at least as long as I’ve known her.”

Wallander furrowed his brow.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Didn’t you know she was my stepdaughter?”

Wallander was sure that the information had not been in the report. He would have remembered it.

“Ruth and I had Emil together,” Hökberg said. “Sonja was about two when I entered the scene. That was seventeen years ago. Ruth and I met at a Christmas party.”

“Who was Sonja’s biological father?”

“His name was Rolf. He never cared about her. He and Ruth were never married.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“He died a few years ago. He drank himself to death.”

Wallander looked for a pen in his coat pocket. He had already realized that he had forgotten both his glasses and notebook. There was a pile of old newspapers on the glass table.

“Do you mind if I tear off a piece?”

“Can’t the police afford to stock office supplies anymore?”

“That’s a good question. As it happens I’ve forgotten to bring my notebook.”

Wallander used a magazine as a writing pad. He saw that it was an English-language financial magazine.

“Do you mind if I ask you what you do for a living?”

The answer came as a surprise.

“I play the stock market.”

“I see. What exactly does that entail?”

“I trade stocks, options, foreign currency. I also place some bets, mainly on English cricket games. Sometimes American baseball.”

“So you mean you gamble?”

“Not the usual kind. I never place bets on horses. But I guess you can call trading stocks another form of gambling.”

“And you do all this from home?”

Hökberg got up and gestured for Wallander to follow him. When they reached the adjoining room, Wallander paused in the doorway. There was not simply one TV in this room; there were three. Various numbers flashed past in a dark ribbon on the bottom of each screen. On one wall was a row of clocks showing the time in other parts of the world. It was like stepping into an air traffic control tower.

“People always say technology has made the world smaller,” Hökberg said. “I think that’s debatable. But the fact that it’s made my world bigger is beyond dispute. From this flimsy townhouse at the edge of Ystad, I can reach all the markets in the whole world. I can connect to betting centers in London or Rome. I can buy options on the Hong Kong market and sell American dollars in Jakarta.”

“Is it really so simple?”

“Not completely. You need permits, good contacts, and knowledge. But when I step into this room I’m in the middle of the world. Whenever I choose. Strength and vulnerability go hand in hand.”

They returned to the living room.

“I would like to see Sonja’s room,” Wallander said.

Hökberg led him up the stairs. They walked past a room that Wallander assumed belonged to their boy, Emil. Hökberg pointed to a door.

“I’ll wait downstairs,” he said. “If you don’t need me, that is.”

“No, I’ll be fine.”

Wallander heard Hökberg’s heavy steps recede down the stairs. He pushed open the door. There was a sloping ceiling in the room and one of the windows was slightly open. A thin curtain wafted in the wind. Wallander knew from experience that the first impression was often the most valuable. A closer examination could reveal dramatic details that were not immediately visible, but the first impression was something he always came back to.

A person lived here in this room. She was the one he was looking for. The bed was made, heaped with pink flowery cushions. On one of the walls was a shelf covered with teddy bears. There was a mirror on the closet door and a thick rug on the floor. There was a desk by the window, but there was nothing on its surface. Wallander stood in the doorway for a long time and looked into the room. This was where Sonja Hökberg lived. He entered the room, knelt by the bed, and looked underneath. There was a thin covering of dust everywhere except in one spot where an object had left an outline of itself. Wallander shivered. He suspected it was the spot where the hammer had been found. He got up and opened the drawers of the desk. None of them was locked. There weren’t even any locks. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for. Maybe a diary or some photographs. But nothing in the drawers caught his attention. He sat down on the bed and thought about his meeting with Sonja Hökberg.

There was something that had struck him as soon as he saw her room from the doorway.

Something didn’t add up. Sonja Hökberg and her room didn’t go together. He couldn’t imagine her here among all the pink cushions and teddy bears. But it was her room. He tried to figure out what it could mean. Which was closer to the truth — the indifferent girl he had met at the police station, or the room where she had lived and hidden a hammer under her bed?

Many years ago Rydberg had taught him how to listen. Each room has its own life and breath. You have to listen for it. A room can tell you many secrets about the person who lives there.

At first Wallander had been skeptical about Rydberg’s advice, but in time he had come to realize that Rydberg had imparted a crucial knowledge.

Wallander’s head was starting to ache, particularly in his temples. He got up and opened the closet door. There were clothes on the hangers and shoes on the floor. On the inside of the closet door was a poster from a movie called The Devil’s Advocate. The starring role was played by Al Pacino. Wallander remembered him from The Godfather. He shut the closet door and sat down on the chair by the desk. That gave him a new angle from which to view the room.

There’s something missing, he thought. He remembered what Linda’s room had looked like as a teenager. Of course there had been some stuffed animals. But above all there were the pictures of her idols, who changed from time to time but were always there in some form or another.

There was nothing like that in Sonja Hökberg’s room. She was nineteen, and all she had was a movie poster in her closet.

Wallander remained for a few more minutes, then left the room and walked back down the stairs. Hökberg looked at him carefully.

“Did you find anything?”

“I just wanted to have a look around.”

“What’s going to happen to her?”

Wallander shook his head.

“She’ll be tried as an adult, and she’s confessed to the crime. They’re not going to be easy on her.”

Hökberg didn’t say anything. Wallander could see he was pained. Wallander took down the number for Hökberg’s sister-in-law in Höör.

Then he left the townhouse and drove back to the station, feeling worse and worse. He was going to go home after the press conference and crawl into bed.

When he walked into the reception area, Irene waved him over. Wallander saw that she was pale.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “They were looking for you, and as usual you didn’t have your phone with you.”

“Who was looking for me?”

“Everyone.”

Wallander lost his patience.

“What do you mean, ‘everyone’? Give me some names, dammit!”

“Martinsson. And Lisa.”

Wallander went straight to Martinsson’s office. Hansson was in there.

“What’s happened?”

Martinsson answered.

“Sonja Hökberg has escaped.”

Wallander stared at him in disbelief.

“Escaped?”

“It happened about an hour ago. We’ve put all available personnel on the search, but she’s gone.”

Wallander looked at his colleagues.

Then he took off his coat and sat down.

Chapter Six

It didn’t take Wallander long to understand what must have happened.

It Someone had been sloppy, someone had disregarded the most basic security measures. But above all, someone had forgotten the fact that Sonja Hökberg was not the innocent young girl she appeared to be; that she had committed a brutal murder only a couple of days before.

It was easy to recontstruct the chain of events. Sonja Hökberg was supposed to be moved from one room to another. She had met with her lawyer and was to be brought back to the holding cell. While she was waiting to be moved, she had asked to go to the bathroom. When she came back out she saw that the officer on guard had turned his back to her and was engaged in conversation with someone in one of the neighboring offices. She had then simply walked the other way. No one had tried to stop her. She had walked straight out through the front hall. No one had seen her. Not Irene, not anyone else. After about five minutes, the officer in charge of her had gone into the bathroom and discovered that she was gone. He had then looked into the room where she had talked to her lawyer, and then he’d alerted security. At that point Sonja Hökberg had had ten minutes to do her disappearing act, and that had been more than enough time.

Wallander groaned and felt his headache worsen.

“I’ve alerted all available personnel,” Martinsson said. “And I called her father. You had just left the house. Did you discover anything that might tell us where she’s headed?”

“Her mother is staying with her sister in Höör.”

He gave Martinsson the number.

“She can hardly be planning to go there on foot,” Hansson said.

“She has a driver’s licence,” Martinsson said, with the telephone receiver pressed against his ear. “She could hitch a ride, steal a car.”

“The first person we have to talk to is Eva Persson,” Wallander said. “And that’s going to happen pronto. Juvenile or not, she’s going to tell us everything she knows.”

Hansson got up to leave and almost collided with Lisa Holgersson, who had only just heard of the disappearance. While Martinsson was talking on the phone with Sonja Hökberg’s mother, Wallander told Holgersson how the escape had taken place.

“This is simply unacceptable,” she said when Wallander had finished.

Holgersson was furious. Wallander liked that about her. He thought about how their previous chief, Björk, would always start worrying about his own reputation at times like these.

“These things are not supposed to happen,” Wallander said. “But they do. The most important thing right now is to track her down. Then we’ll have to scrutinize our security practices and figure out who’s responsible for the mistakes in this case.”

“Do you think there’s a danger of more violence?”

Wallander thought for a moment. He saw an image of her room and all the stuffed animals sitting in a row.

“We don’t know enough about her at this point,” he said. “But additional violence cannot be ruled out.”

Martinsson put the phone down.

“I’ve just talked to her mother,” he said. “And our colleagues in Höör. They know what to do.”

“I’m not sure any of us knows that,” Wallander objected. “But I want that girl picked up as soon as possible.”

“Was the escape planned?” Holgersson asked.

“Not according to the officer in charge,” Martinsson answered. “I think she took advantage of the situation.”

“Oh, it was planned,” Wallander said. “She was waiting for the right moment, that’s all. Has anyone spoken to her attorney? Could he be of any help?”

“I don’t think anyone’s thought of that yet,” Martinsson said. “He left the station when he was done talking to her.”

Wallander got up.

“I’ll talk to him.”

“What about the press conference?” Holgersson asked. “What should we do about that?”

Wallander looked down at his watch. It was twenty minutes past eleven.

“We’ll do it as planned, but I’m afraid we’ll have to give them the latest developments.”

“I guess I should be there,” Holgersson said.

Wallander didn’t answer. He returned to his office, his head throbbing. Every time he had to swallow it hurt.

I should be lying in bed, he thought. Not out running around after teenage girls who murder taxi drivers.

He found some tissues in a desk drawer and wiped himself down as well as he could. He was running a temperature and sweating profusely. Then he called Sonja Hökberg’s lawyer, Lötberg, and told him what had happened.

“This is unexpected,” Lötberg said when Wallander had finished.

“What this is is a problem,” Wallander said. “Do you have any information that might help us?”

“I don’t think so. It was hard to connect with her. She seemed very calm on the surface but as to what was going on underneath I have no idea.”

“Did she mention a boyfriend? Anyone she wanted to see?”

“No.”

“No one?”

“She asked about Eva Persson.”

Wallander paused.

“She didn’t ask about her parents?”

“Actually, no.”

This fact struck Wallander as strange, and reminded him of the feeling her room had given him. His sense that something didn’t quite add up about Sonja Hökberg was growing stronger.

“Of course I’ll be in touch if she contacts me,” Lötberg said.

They finished the conversation and Wallander was left with the image of her room in his head. It was a child’s room, he thought. Not the room of a nineteen-year-old. It was still the room of a ten-year-old, as if the room had suddenly stopped aging even though Sonja was still growing.

He couldn’t develop this insight any further, but he knew it was important.

It took Martinsson less than half an hour to arrange Wallander’s meeting with Eva Persson and her mother. Wallander was shocked when he saw the girl. She was short and hardly looked older than twelve. He looked at her hands and tried unsuccessfully to imagine her holding a knife and forcefully plunging it into the chest of her victim. But he soon discovered that there was something about her that reminded him of Sonja Hökberg. At first he couldn’t put his finger on it, but then he realized what it was.

The look in her eyes, the same indifference.

Martinsson left them alone. Wallander would have liked Höglund to be present, but she was out in the field somewhere, trying to organize the search for Sonja Hökberg as efficiently as possible.

Eva Persson’s mother looked like she had been crying. Wallander felt sorry for her. He shuddered to think what she was going through.

He got right to the point.

“Sonja has escaped. I want you to tell me where you think she’s gone. Think carefully before you say anything, and make sure you tell the whole truth. Understand?”

Eva Persson nodded.

“Where do you think she’s gone?”

“Home, probably. Where else would she have gone?”

Wallander couldn’t tell if she was telling the truth or being arrogant. He realized his headache was making him impatient.

“If she had gone home, we would already have found her,” he said and raised his voice a little. Eva Persson’s mother seemed to retreat into herself.

“I don’t know where she is.”

Wallander opened his notebook.

“Who are her friends? Who does she normally associate with? Does she know anyone who has a car?”

“Normally it’s just her and me.”

“What about her other friends?”

“There’s Kalle, I guess.”

“What’s his last name?”

“Ryss.”

“His name is Kalle Ryss?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to hear a single lie, do you understand?”

“What the fuck are you screaming at me for, you old bastard?!”

Wallander almost exploded, perhaps reacting most strongly to being called an “old bastard.”

“Just tell me who he is.”

“He’s a surfer. He goes to Australia a lot, but he’s home right now working for his dad.”

“What does the dad do?”

“He owns a hardware store.”

“And he’s friends with Sonja?”

“They used to go out.”

Wallander continued questioning her but Eva Persson was unable to think of anyone else that Sonja Hökberg might have been likely to contact. She didn’t know where Sonja would be likely to go. In a last attempt to get some more information, Wallander turned to Eva’s mother but she only said she knew very little about Sonja.

“You must have known something about her — she was your daughter’s best friend.”

“I never liked her.”

Eva Persson turned to her mother and hit her in the face. It happened so fast that Wallander had no time to stop her. Eva’s mother started screaming and Eva continued hitting her and yelling obscenities. She bit Wallander’s hand but he still managed to tear them apart.

“Get rid of that old hag!” she yelled. “I don’t want to see her anymore!”

At that moment Wallander lost control of himself. He slapped Eva Persson hard in the face. The girl was knocked to the ground. Wallander quickly left the room with his palm stinging. Lisa Holgersson came hurrying down the hallway and stared questioningly at him.

“What happened in there?”

Wallander didn’t answer. He looked down at his hand. It had turned red and was still hurting.

Neither one of them noticed the journalist who had arrived early for the press conference. During the chaotic events of the last few minutes he had managed to come right up to the doorway unnoticed. He snapped a few pictures and made a note of what he observed. A headline was starting to take shape in his head.

When the press conference finally started, it was half an hour late. Lisa Holgersson had been holding onto the hope that a patrol car would spot Sonja Hökberg. Wallander, who had not been harboring any illusions about the likelihood of this, had wanted to start the press conference on time. His reasons were only partly due to his doubts about finding Sonja. It was also because his flu was now starting to break out in full force.

At last he managed to convince her to go ahead. The reporters were only going to get irritated and make things more difficult for them.

“What do you want me to tell them?” she asked him as they walked into the large conference room where the meeting was to be held.

“Nothing,” Wallander said. “I’ll handle it. I just want you to be present, that’s all.”

Wallander excused himself and went to the bathroom. He rinsed his face off with cold water, then returned to the conference room. He flinched when he saw how many reporters were assembled. He walked up to the small podium, followed by Holgersson. They sat down and Wallander looked out over the sea of faces. He recognized some of them. He even knew some of the reporters’ names, but most of them were complete strangers.

What should I tell them? he wondered. Even when you think you known what you’re going to say, it never comes out exactly the way you had imagined.

Lisa Holgersson welcomed the reporters and introduced Wallander.

I hate this, he thought bitterly. I don’t just dislike it, I hate all these meetings with the media even though I know it’s a fact of life.

He counted silently to three before he began.

“Several days ago a taxi driver in Ystad was robbed and brutally assaulted. As you know, he recently died due to the severity of the wounds that were inflicted. Two people have since been charged with the crime and they have both confessed. Since one of the assailants is a juvenile, we will not be releasing any names at this press conference.”

One of the reporters raised his hand.

“Isn’t it true that the assailants were both women?”

“I’ll get there, don’t worry,” Wallander said.

The reporter was young and pushy.

“This press conference was supposed to start at one o’clock and it’s already past one-thirty. Don’t you realize that we have deadlines to meet?”

Wallander ignored this question.

“The charges in this case have been upgraded to murder,” he said.

“There’s no reason for us not to disclose the fact that this was an unusually brutal killing. It is therefore particularly comforting that we were able to resolve the investigation as quickly as we did.”

Then he took a deep breath. It felt like diving into a pool without knowing how deep the water was.

“Unfortunately, there has recently been a complication due to the fact that one of the assailants has escaped. We have, however, every expectation of catching her shortly.”

At first there was complete silence in the room. Then it exploded in questions.

“What’s her name?”

Wallander looked over at Holgersson, who nodded.

“Sonja Hökberg.”

“Where was she being detained?”

“Here at the police station.”

“How could that happen?”

“We’re conducting an internal inquiry into the matter.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Exactly what you think it means. That we’re investigating how Sonja Hökberg was able to escape from our custody.”

“Would it be correct to characterize her as dangerous?”

Wallander hesitated.

“We don’t know yet if she poses a threat to the public.”

“Surely she either poses a threat or she doesn’t? Which is it?”

Wallander was starting to lose his temper, something that had happened innumerable times this day. He wanted to bring the proceedings to a close so he could go home and go to bed.

“Next question.”

The reporter was not going to give up.

“I want a definite answer. Is she dangerous or not?”

“I’ve already given you an answer. Next question.”

“Is she armed?”

“We don’t know.”

“How was the taxi driver killed?”

“With a knife and a hammer.”

“Have you recovered the murder weapons?”

“Yes.”

“Can we see them?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“For technical reasons linked to the progress of the investigation. Next question.”

“Have the police been alerted nationwide?”

“At this point there is only regional involvment. And that’s all we have to tell you for the moment.”

Wallander’s closing words were met with a storm of protest. Wallander knew there were an endless number of more or less important questions left, but he got up and pulled Chief Holgersson up with him.

“That will have to do for now,” he hissed.

“Shouldn’t we stay longer?”

“Then you’ll have to take over. They got the information they need. They’ll fill in the rest better than we could have done.”

Reporters from TV and radio stations wanted interviews. Wallander had to wade through a throng of microphones and camera lenses.

“You’ll have to deal with this yourself,” he said to Holgersson. “Or Martinsson. I have to go home.”

They had reached the hallway. She looked at him with surprise.

“You’re going home?”

“I give you permission to lay your hand on my brow, if you like. I’m sick. I have a temperature. There are other officers here who are more than capable of finding Hökberg, and of answering all these damned questions from the media.”

He left without waiting for a response. What I’m doing is wrong, he thought. I should stay and try to sort out this chaotic situation. But I just don’t have the energy.

He reached his office and put on his coat. A note left on the desk caught his attention. It was in Martinsson’s handwriting.

“According to pathologist’s report, Tynnes Falk died from natural causes. No crime. Shelve it for now.”

It took Wallander a couple of seconds to remember that this was in reference to the man who was found dead by the cash machine.

One less thing to worry about, he thought.

He left the station by slipping out through the garage in order to avoid reporters. The wind was very strong now. He had to hunch over and run straight into it to get to his car. When he turned the key, nothing happened. He tried several times, but the engine was completely dead.

He took off the 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 that would have to wait. Everything would have to wait. Right now all he wanted to do was sleep.

When he woke up, it was as if he had come running out of a dream at full speed.

He had been in the middle of a press conference, but this one had been held at Sonja Hökberg’s house. Wallander had not been able to answer a single question. Then he had suddenly spotted his father sitting in the very back of the room. His father seemed completely undisturbed by the TV cameras in the room and was calmly painting his favorite fall landscape.

That was the point when Wallander woke up. He lay awake for a moment, listening for sounds. The wind blew against the window. He turned his head. The clock on his bedside table read half past six. He had been sleeping for almost four hours. He tried to swallow. His throat was still swollen and sore, but his temperature seemed to have gone down. He knew that Sonja Hökberg was still on the loose. Someone would have called him otherwise. He got up and went out into the kitchen. There was the reminder to buy soap. He added the book he had to pick up to the list. Then he made some tea. He looked for a lemon but didn’t find one. There were just some old tomatoes and a half-rotten cucumber in the vegetable bin. He threw out the cucumber. When the tea was ready he brought the cup with him out into the living room.

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

“How’s it going?”

Hansson sounded tired when he answered.

“She’s disappeared without a trace.”

“No one’s seen her?”

“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 by 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 promised to call if anything new developed.

Wallander put the phone down and put on a compact disc with Verdi’s La Traviata. He lay down on the couch and closed his eyes. He thought about Eva Persson and 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 recognized the voice immediately. It was Sten Widen, 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.”

“I thought 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 the paper. Apart from the results of the latest horse race, of course.”

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

“I wanted to say goodbye.”

Wallander felt something constrict in his stomach. Was Sten sick? Had his alcohol abuse finally managed to ruin his liver?

“Why? Why do you need to say goodbye?”

“I’m selling my place and taking off.”

The last few years Sten Widen had talked about leaving. The horse ranch he had inherited from his father had stopped being profitable many years ago. Wallander had listened to his dreams of starting a new life on countless occasions, but he had never taken Widen 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 right 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?”

“I don’t know yet, but I’ll make up my mind soon.”

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

“I’ll come by as soon as I can. Maybe in a few days.”

“I’ll be home.”

When the conversation was over, Wallander sat deep in thought for a long time. He couldn’t hide from his own envy. His own dreams of leaving his work as a police officer behind felt extremely remote. What Sten was doing right now, Wallander could never do.

He drank the rest of 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 and directed it at the stereo.

At the same time the power went out.

At first he thought it was a blown fuse, but after feeling his way over to the window he saw that even the street lamps had gone out.

He returned to the sofa in the dark and waited.

What he didn’t know was that a large part of Scania lay in darkness.

Chapter Seven

Olle Andersson was sleeping when the phone rang.

He tried to turn on the bedside lamp but it wouldn’t go on. That told him what the phone 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 around the clock. It was Rune Ågren. Olle Andersson had already known that Ågren was the one on duty that night, the eighth of October. He was from Malmö and had worked for various utility companies for over thirty years. He was due to retire next year. He got straight to the point.

“Twenty-five percent of Scania is without power.”

Olle Andersson was surprised. Even though there had been gusty winds the past few days, there had been nothing close to a storm.

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

Olle 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 Scania would be affected one way or the other. Someone was always in charge of making sure that didn’t happen. This week Olle Andersson was on call for the Ystad area.

It took him nineteen 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 person still living could remember what life had been like before. But Andersson 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 the middle of a field. It was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. At regular intervals there were No TRESPASSING and DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE signs. He hunched over against the wind, carrying a set of keys in his hand and wearing some glasses he had constructed himself. He had attached two small and powerful flashlights to the frames. He found the right keys and stopped in front of the gates. They were open. He looked around. There was no other car, no sign of a person. He took up his radio again and called Ågren.

“The gates have been busted open,” he said.

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

“It doesn’t look like anyone’s here. I’m going in.”

It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. The gates had been broken open before, and it was always reported to the police. Sometimes the police managed to apprehend the guilty party, usually drunk teenagers on a vandalism kick. But they had also discussed the possibility of someone bent on sabotaging the power-distribution grid. In fact, Andersson had been in a meeting only this last September in which one of the Sydkraft safety engineers had talked about instituting a whole new set of security measures.

He turned his head. Since he had his handheld flashlight as well, three spots of light traveled across the metal frame of the substation. A little gray 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 only be opened with two different keys, or by the use of powerful explosives. Andersson had marked the various keys on his keychain with colored bits of tape. The red key went to the gates, the yellow and blue were for the steel door of the transformer building. He looked around. The place was deserted. 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. Was there anyone behind him? He could hear Ågren’s raspy voice coming from the radio that dangled from his jacket. He didn’t bother to answer. What was it that had made him stop? There was nothing out there in the darkness, at least nothing he could see. There was, however, a bad smell, but that probably came from the fields, he thought. The farmer must have fertilized them recently He continued toward the transformer building. The bad smell still lingered. Suddenly 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 like it’s been forced.”

“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 see what it is. There’s a lot of pressure right now from above 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 Scania this October evening because a burned corpse lay among the power lines.

He stumbled backward 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 realized he was shaking. He couldn’t believe what had happened. What could drive a person to go down to a power substation and commit suicide 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 gusty, and now 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, who was the senior officer on duty. He promised to drive out right away. He had a candle by the phone. He knew Martinsson’s phone number by heart. It took Martinsson a while to pick up since he was sleeping and had no idea 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 inadvertently knocked the phone down onto 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 he felt no fever.

“My car has broken down,” he said. “You’ll have to pick me up.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Make that five,” said Wallander. “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 arrived in seven minutes. They drove through the dark city. Hansson was waiting by one of the roundabouts at the outskirts of town.

“It’s one of the substations just north of the waste management plant,” Martinsson said.

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

“What exactly happened?”

“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 outage.”

“Is it affecting a large area?”

“According to Hansson, one quarter of Scania is without power.”

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

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

Hansson stopped the 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 out here in the open fields. The man who came toward 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 anymore.”

Wallander took Martinsson’s flashlight 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 to his stomach, Wallander thought absently. He can’t take the smell of burned bodies.

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

Wallander moved aside so Martinsson could take a look.

“Oh, Christ,” Martinsson groaned.

Wallander called out to Hansson to get Nyberg on the line and organize the backup 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 here to take a look. They always have repairmen 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 flashlight on the body. Nothing remained of the clothes. It was like looking at a mummy, or a body that had been fished out of a bog after a thousand years. But this person had only been dead for a few hours. He tried to think back to when the power had been cut off. That had been some time around eleven. Now it was almost one o’clock in the morning. If this body had caused the outage then this had happened about two hours ago.

Wallander got up and let his flashlight 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 flashlight. 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 flashlight travel over the blackened remains. He didn’t know what was causing this feeling, but it was as if he was sensing something that was no longer there. But that had been there.

He walked out of the building and studied 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 exactly so he wouldn’t interfere with any tracks that might be there. When he reached the gates he examined the lock. It had been broken and forced open. What did that mean? The gates had been clumsily cut open, but a reinforced steel door had posed no problem?

Martinsson was sitting 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 windshield 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 realize the enormity of what was happening.

A quarter of Scania was without power. It was dark from Trelleborg to Kristianstad. The hospitals were using their emergency generators, but otherwise the power outage 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 reached for Martinsson’s cell phone and dialed 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 outlined the situation for her. She became fully alert.

“Do you want me to come down there right away?”

“I think you should get in touch with Sydkraft and explain that their power problem now also involves a police investigation.”

“What do you think has happened? Is it a suicide?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about sabotage? A terrorist act?”

“I don’t think we can answer that question yet. We can’t rule any of these things out yet.”

“I’ll call Sydkraft. Keep me posted.”

Wallander hung up. Hansson came running through the rain over to his 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 back through the rain to his own car.

Twenty minutes later, Wallander saw the lights from Nyberg’s car appear in the rearview mirror. Wallander stepped out of the car and greeted him. Nyberg looked tired.

“What is it that’s happened, exactly? I couldn’t get a coherent sentence out of Hansson.”

“We have a dead body in there. Burned to a crisp. There’s 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 Scania will be waiting for me to finish?”

“We can’t take that into consideration. I think they’re working on restoring the power anyway, just not by means of this substation.”

“We live in a vulnerable society,” Nyberg said and immediately started commandeering 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 some central command employee called Ågren. They had pinpointed the blackout to this substation. Andersson lives in Svarte. It took him twenty minutes to get here. He found that the gates to the area had been tampered with, but that the 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 meet anyone walking around.”

Wallander thought for a moment.

“We have to get to the bottom of this question 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 know that you’re shaken 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 use of force. How do you explain that?”

“I can’t.”

“Who else has copies of these keys?”

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

“But someone did unlock the steel door?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“I take it these keys can’t be copied.”

“The locks are made in the United States. They’re supposed to be impossible to jimmy.”

“What’s Moberg’s first name?”

“Lars.”

“Is it possible someone forgot to lock the door?”

Andersson shook his head.

“That would be grounds for instant dismissal. The security checks are very thorough. If anything, security has increased in the past few years.”

Wallander had nothing else to ask for the moment.

“I’d like you to remain here for now,” he said. “In case any other questions come up. I’d also like you to call Lars Moberg and ask him if he still has the keys for this place. The ones that open the steel door.”

Wallander left the car. It was no longer raining as hard. The conversation with Andersson had increased his sense of anxiety. It was still possible that someone wanting to commit suicide had decided to come out here to this substation, but the facts were starting to speak against this hypothesis; among other things, the fact that the steel door had been opened with keys. Wallander realized where this thought was leading: murder. The victim had then been disposed of in the power lines to cover up the crime.

Wallander walked into the strong spotlights. The photographer had just finished taking his pictures and video clips. Nyberg was kneeling by the body. He started muttering irritably when Wallander happened to block 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 before answering.

“It’s a macabre way for someone to choose to commit suicide. If it’s murder, it’s unusually brutal. It would be the equivalent of executing someone 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 continued to work. One of his technicians had started to search the area between the building and the gates. The pathologist arrived, a woman Wallander had met several times before. Her name was Susann Bexell and she was a woman of few words. She immediately got down to business. 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 frozen. Wallander passed him his cup of coffee.

“They’re starting 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 frozen 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 able to do more good there than here. Hansson nodded gratefully and drove off. Wallander walked over to the pathologist.

“Have you learnt anything about him?”

Susann Bexell looked over at him.

“Just enough to tell you you’re wrong. This isn’t a man, it’s a woman.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, but I’m not going to answer any other questions for now.”

“I just have one more question. Was she dead when she wound up here, or was it the power that killed her?”

“I don’t know that yet.”

Wallander turned around thoughtfully. He had been assuming the victim was a man.

At that moment the crime technician who had been searching the area came over to Nyberg with something in his hand. Wallander joined them.

The object 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 on a previous occasion. 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 with surprise.

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

The handbag had recently rested on a desk inside the interrogation room. It had a clasp that looked like an oak leaf.

He wasn’t making a mistake.

“This purse belongs to Sonja Hökberg,” he said. “She’s the one who’s lying in there.”

It was ten minutes past two. The rain had picked up again.

Chapter Eight

The power in Ystad was restored shortly after three o’clock. At that time Wallander was still working with the crime technicians at the substation. Hansson called from the police station and told him the news. In the distance, Wallander could see lights come on 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 Olle 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. It was still raining, which made for difficult working conditions. Martinsson slipped in the mud and cut his elbow. Wallander was shaking with cold and longed for his rubber boots.

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

“Someone should have seen her,” Martinsson said. “Our cars were out looking for her.”

“Double-check to see if a squad car came down this way and saw someone.”

“What’s te alternative?”

“That someone gave her a ride. Someone who left her and drove off.”

They both knew what that implied. The question of how Sonja 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 both searched in their thoughts for a rational explanation.

“We need a list of anyone who could possibly have had access to the keys,” Wallander continued. “I want every key accounted for. Who had them, and what they were doing last night.”

“I have trouble getting all this to hang together,” Martinsson said.

“Sonja Hökberg commits murder. Then she gets murdered in turn? Suicide makes more sense.”

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

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

“Same as you. That she felt no remorse, and could just as well have killed an old taxi driver as a bug.”

“That doesn’t suggest suicide to me. Why would she kill herself if she felt no remorse?”

Martinsson turned off the windshield wipers. Through the windshield they could see Olle Andersson waiting in his car, and beyond him Nyberg was helping to move a spotlight. His movements were abrupt. Wallander understood that he was both angry and impatient.

“Well, is there anything that suggests it was murder?”

“No,” Wallander answered. “There’s nothing to suggest either possibility, therefore we have to keep them both open. But I think we can rule out accidental death.”

The conversation died away. After a while, Wallander asked Martinsson to make sure the investigative team was ready to meet at eight o’clock in the morning. 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 counted silently to ten before continuing. 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 even she may not be able to tell.”

Wallander nodded. He looked down at his watch. It was half past three. There was no point in staying any longer.

“I’m going to take off now. But we have a meeting at eight o’clock.”

Nyberg muttered something unintelligible in reply. Wallander took that to mean he would be there. Then he returned to the car, where Martinsson was making notes.

“We’re going,” he said. “You’ll have to take me home.”

They returned to Ystad in silence. When Wallander got back to his apartment he started a bath. While the bathtub was filling up, he swallowed the last of his painkillers and added “pills” to the list on the kitchen table. He wondered helplessly when he would next be able to go by the drugstore.

His body thawed out in the warm water. He dozed off for a couple of minutes, his mind a blank. But then the images returned. Sonja Hökberg and Eva Persson. In his thoughts, he slowly went through the events. He proceeded cautiously so as not to forget anything. Nothing made any sense. Why had Johan Lundberg been killed? What had motivated Sonja Hökberg and made Eva Persson go along with it? He was sure it wasn’t a random impulse. They needed the money for something very particular, or else it was about something entirely different.

There had only been about thirty kronor in the handbag that they had found at the substation. The money from the robbery had been confiscated by the police.

She was desperate, he thought. Suddenly she sees a chance to get away. It’s ten o’clock in the morning. Nothing could have been planned in advance. She leaves the police station and disappear for thirteen hours. Her body is later found eight kilometers from Ystad.

How did she get there? She could have hitched a ride. But she could also have called someone to come pick her up. And then what? Does she ask to be driven to a spot where she commits suicide? Or is she murdered? And who has access to the keys that open the door, but not the ones for the gates?

Wallander got up out of the bath. There are two central questions, he thought. If she had decided to commit suicide, why pick the substation, and how did she get the keys? And if she was murdered, then why?

Wallander crawled into bed and pulled up the blankets. It was half past four. His head was spinning and he realized he was too tired to think. He had to sleep. Before turning out the light, he set his alarm clock. He then pushed the clock as far away from his bed as possible, so he would be forced to get out of bed to turn it off.

When he woke up he felt as if he had only been sleeping for a couple of minutes. He tried to swallow. His throat was still sore but seemed better than it had the day before. He felt his forehead. The fever was gone, but he was congested. He walked out to the bathroom and blew his nose, avoiding his reflection in the mirror. His whole body ached with fatigue. While he was waiting for the water to boil so he could make coffee, he looked out the window. It was still windy, but the rain clouds were gone. It was five degrees Celsius. He wondered absently when he would have time to do anything about his car.

They met in one of the conference rooms at the police station shortly after eight. Wallander looked at Martinsson’s and Hansson’s tired faces and wondered what his own face must be like. Lisa Holgersson, however, who also could not have slept many hours, seemed undismayed. She called the meeting to order.

“We need to be perfectly clear about the fact that last night’s power outage was one of the most serious ever to have hit Scania. That displays the extent of our vulnerability. What happened should have been impossible, but it happened anyway. Now the authorities, power companies, and law enforcement will have to discuss how security can be stepped up. This is just by way of introduction.”

She nodded to Wallander to continue. He gave a brief summation of the events.

“In other words, we don’t know what happened,” he said finally. “We don’t know for sure if it was an accident, suicide, or murder, even if we can reasonably rule out an accident. She was either alone or had someone with her who had broken in through the outside gates. After that they apparently had access to keys. The whole thing is strange, to say the least.”

He looked around at the others gathered around the table. Martinsson said he had confirmed that several police cars had on several different occasions driven along the road that led out to the power substation while they were looking for Sonja Hokberg.

“Then we know this much,” Wallander said. “Someone drove her out there. Were there any car tracks found?”

He directed that question to Nyberg, who sat at the other end of the table with bloodshot eyes and wild hair. Wallander knew how much he was looking forward to his retirement.

“Apart from our own cars and that of Andersson, we found tracks belonging to two other vehicles. But there was a hell of a rainstorm last night and the impressions weren’t too clear.”

“But two other cars had been there?”

“Andersson seemed to think one of them could have belonged to his colleague, Moberg. We’re still checking on it.”

“That leaves one set of car tracks unaccounted for?”

“Yes.”

Ann-Britt Höglund, who hadn’t said anything up to this point, now raised her hand.

“Could it really be anything other than murder?” she asked. “Like all of you, I have a hard time imagining that Sonja Hökberg would have committed suicide. And even if she had decided to end her life, I can’t imagine she would have chosen to burn herself to death.”

Wallander was reminded of an incident that had occurred a few years earlier. A young woman from a Central American country had burned herself to death by pouring gasoline over herself out in the middle of a linseed field. It was one of his worst memories. He had been present. He had seen the girl set fire to herself. And he had not been able to do anything.

“Women take pills,” Höglund was saying. “They rarely shoot themselves. And I don’t think they throw themselves on power lines very often, either.”

“I think you’re right,” Wallander answered. “But we have to wait for the pathologist’s report. Those of us who were out there last night weren’t able to determine what happened.”

There were no other questions.

“The keys,” Wallander said. “We need to make sure none of the keys were stolen. That’s the first thing we need to establish.”

Martinsson volunteered to check on the keys. Then they ended the meeting and Wallander went to his office. On his way there, he got a cup of coffee. The telephone rang. It was Irene from reception.

“There’s someone here to see you,” she said.

“Who is it?”

“His name is Enander and he’s a doctor.”

Wallander searched his mind without being able to come up with a face.

“Send him to someone else.”

“I’ve tried that, but he insists on speaking to you. And he says it’s urgent.”

Wallander sighed.

“I’ll be right out,” he said and put the phone down.

The man waiting for him in the reception area was middle-aged. He had cropped hair and was dressed in a sweatsuit. Wallander noted his firm handshake. The doctor said his name was David Enander.

“I’m very busy right now,” Wallander said. “The power outage last night has created a lot of chaos. I can spare about ten minutes. What is it you wanted to see me about?”

“I’d like to clear up a misunderstanding.”

Wallander waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. They walked to his office. The armrest came off the chair that Enander sat down in.

“Let it be,” Wallander said. “The chair’s broken.”

David Enander got right to the point.

“I’m here about Tynnes Falk, who died a few days ago.”

“That case is closed, as far as we’re concerned. He died of natural causes.”

“That’s the misunderstanding I wanted to clear up,” Enander said and stroked his cropped hair with one hand.

Wallander saw he was anxious about something.

“I’m listening.”

David Enander took his time. He chose his words carefully.

“I’ve been Tynnes Falk’s physician for many years. He became my patient in 1981 — that is, more than fifteen years ago. He first came to me because of a rash on his hands. At that time I was working in the epidermal clinic at the hospital, but I opened a private practice in 1986 and Falk followed me there. He was rarely sick. His skin rash disappeared, but I continued with his regular checkups. Falk was a man who wanted to know the state of his health. He took great care of himself. He ate well, exercised, and had very regular habits.”

Wallander wondered what Enander was driving at and felt a growing impatience.

“I was away when he died,” Enander continued. “I only found out last night when I returned.”

“How did you hear it?”

“His ex-wife called me.”

Wallander nodded for him to continue.

“She said the cause of death was a massive coronary.”

“That’s what we were told.”

“The only thing is, that can’t possibly be true.”

Wallander raised his eyebrows.

“And why not?”

“It’s very simple. As little as ten days ago I did a complete physical workup on Falk. His heart was in wonderful condition. He had the physical stamina of a twenty-year-old.”

Wallander thought this through.

“So what is it you’re saying? That the pathologist made a mistake?”

“I’m aware of the fact that a heart attack can in rare cases strike a perfectly healthy person. But I can’t accept that this happened in Falk’s case.”

“What else could he have died of?”

“That, I don’t know. But I wanted to straighten out this misunderstanding. It wasn’t his heart.”

“I’ll pass on what you’ve told me,” Wallander said. “Was there anything else?”

“Something must have happened,” Enander said. “I don’t know if I’m right about this, but I gather he had a head wound. I think he was probably attacked. Killed.”

“Nothing points to that conclusion. He wasn’t robbed.”

“All I know is, it wasn’t his heart,” Enander repeated firmly. “I’m neither a pathologist nor a forensic specialist, so I can’t tell you what killed him. But it wasn’t his heart. I’m sure of it.”

Wallander made a note of Enander’s phone number and address. Then he got up. The conversation was over. He didn’t have any more time.

Wallander saw Enander back out to the reception area, then returned to his office. He put the notes about Tynnes Falk in a drawer and used the following hour to write up the events of the night before.

As he typed, he thought about the fact that he had once thought of his computer with distaste. But then one day he suddenly realized it actually made his work easier. His desk was no longer drowning in random notes jotted on odd bits of paper. He still typed with two fingers and often made mistakes, but now when he worked on his reports he no longer had to use white-out to erase all of his mistakes. That in itself was a huge relief.

At eleven o’clock, Martinsson came in with a list of all the people who had keys to the power substation. There were five names. Wallander glanced at them.

“Everyone can account for their keys,” Martinsson said. “None of them have let them out of their possession. Apart from Moberg, no one has been out to the substation in the past few days. Should I look into what they were doing during the time that Sonja Hökberg was missing?”

“Let’s wait on that,” Wallander said. “Before the forensic reports come back, we can’t do much except wait.”

“What should we do with Eva Persson?”

“She should be questioned more thoroughly.”

“Are you going to do that?”

“No, thanks. I thought we would leave that to Hoglund. I’ll talk to her.”

By noon, Wallander had brought Hoglund up to date on the Lundberg case. His throat was feeling better, but he was still tired. After trying to start his car up a couple of times, he called a service station and asked them to pick up the car. He left the keys with Irene and walked down into town to have lunch. At the next table, people were talking about the power outage. Afterward he went by the drugstore and bought soap and painkillers. When he returned to the station his car was gone. He called the mechanic, but they still hadn’t identified the problem. When he asked how much the repair was going to cost, the answer was vague. He hung up and decided that enough was enough. He was going to get a new car.

Then he let himself sink down into his thoughts. He was suddenly convinced that Sonja Hökberg had not ended up at that substation by accident. And it was no coincidence that it was one of the most vulnerable points in Scania’s power-distribution system.

He reached for the list that Martinsson had given him. Five people, five sets of keys.

Olle Andersson, line repairman

Lars Moberg, line repairman

Hilding Olofsson, power manager

Artur Wahlund, safety manager

Stefan Molin, technical director

The names still told him as little as they had when he’d first looked them over. He called Martinsson, who picked up immediately.

“These key guys,” he said. “You haven’t by any chance looked them up in the police register, have you?”

“Should I have?”

“Not at all, but I know you’re very thorough.”

“I can do it now, if you like.”

“Hold off on it. There’s nothing from the pathologist?”

“I don’t think they’ll be able to say anything until tomorrow at the earliest.”

“Then plug in the names. If you have time.”

In contrast to Wallander, Martinsson loved his computer. If anyone at the station was having a computer problem they always turned to him for help.

Wallander turned back to the Lundberg murder case. At three o’clock, he went to get some coffee. He was no longer so congested; his throat was basically back to normal. Hansson told him that Hoglund was talking to Eva Persson. Everything is flowing nicely, he thought. For once we have time for everything we need to do.

He had just sat down with his paperwork when Chief Holgersson turned up at his door. She had one of the evening papers in her hand. Wallander could see from her face that something had happened.

“Have you seen this?” she asked, and handed him the newspaper. Wallander stared at the photograph. It was a picture of Eva Persson sprawled on the floor of the interrogation room. It looked as if she had fallen.

He felt a knot form in his stomach when he read the accompanying text.

Well known policeman assaults teenage girl. We have the pictures.

“Who took this picture?” Wallander asked in disbelief. “There were no journalists around, were there?”

“There must have been.”

Wallander had a vague recollection of the fact that the door to the hallway had been slightly open, and there might have been a shadow of a person there.

“It was before the press conference,” Holgersson said. “Maybe one of the reporters came early and was hanging around the hallway.”

Wallander was paralyzed. He had often been involved in scuffles and fistfights in his thirty-year career, but that had always been during a difficult arrest. He had never jumped anyone in the middle of an interrogation, however irritated he had become.

It had only happened once, and just that once there had been a photographer present.

“There’s going to be trouble here,” Holgersson said. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“She was attacking her mother. I slapped her to keep her from hurting her mother.”

“That’s not the story the picture tells.”

“That’s how it was.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Wallander had no answer.

“I hope you understand I’m forced to order an investigation into this.”

Wallander heard the disappointment in her voice. It angered him. She doesn’t believe me, he thought.

“Am I suspended from my job?”

“No, but I want to hear exactly what happened.”

“I’ve already told you.”

“Eva Persson gave a different account of the incident to Ann-Britt. She said your assault came out of the blue.”

“In that case she’s lying. Ask her mother.”

Holgersson hesitated before answering.

“We did,” she said finally. “She says her daughter never hit her.”

Wallander was quiet. I’m going to quit, he thought. I’m going to quit the force and leave this place. And I’m never coming back.

Chief Holgersson waited for an answer, but Wallander didn’t say anything.

Finally she left the room.

Chapter Nine

Wallander immediately left the station.

He wasn’t sure if he was running away or just going out for air. He knew he was right about what had happened, but Chief Holgersson didn’t believe him and that upset him.

It was only after he got outside that he remembered he didn’t have a car. He swore. When he was upset he liked to drive around until he had calmed down again.

He went down to the liquor store and bought a bottle of whiskey. Then he went straight home, unplugged the phone, and sat down at the kitchen table. He opened the bottle and took a couple of deep draughts. It tasted bad. But he felt he needed it. If there was one thing that made him feel helpless, it was being accused of something he didn’t do. Holgersson hadn’t spelled it out for him, but he wasn’t wrong about her doubts. Maybe Hansson had been right all along, he thought angrily. You should never have a woman for a boss. He took another swig. He was starting to feel better, and was even starting to regret the fact that he had come straight home. That could be interpreted as a sign that he was guilty. He plugged the phone back in. He felt a sense of childish impatience over the fact that no one had called him. He dialed the number to the police station and Irene picked up the phone.

“I just wanted to let you know I’ve gone home for the day,” he said.

“I have a cold.”

“Hansson has been asking for you, and Nyberg. Also people from several newspapers.”

“What did they want?”

“The papers?”

“No, Hansson and Nyberg.”

“They didn’t say.”

She probable has the paper in front of her right now, Wallander thought. She and all the rest of them. It wouldn’t surprise me if no one’s talking about anything else. And I’ll bet some of them are downright happy about the fact that that bastard Wallander has finally gotten what’s been coming to him.

He asked Irene to put him through to Hansson’s office. It took a while before he picked up. Wallander suspected that Hansson had been poring over some complicated gambling sheets that were supposed to get him that big jackpot, but that never helped him do much more than break even.

“How are the horses doing?” Wallander asked when Hansson picked up, to let him know that the story in the evening papers hadn’t affected him.

“What horses?”

“You’re not betting on horses these days?”

“No, not right now. Why do you ask?”

“It was just a joke. What was it you wanted to ask me?”

“Are you in your office?”

“I’m at home with a cold.”

“I wanted to tell you that I’ve worked out the times that our cars went up and down that road. I’ve talked to the drivers, and no one saw Sonja Hökberg. All in all that stretch of road was covered four times.”

“Then we know she didn’t walk. She must have caught a ride. The first thing she did when she left the station was call someone. Or else she walked to someone’s house first. I hope Ann-Britt knew to ask Eva Persson about that, about who could have given Sonja Hökberg a ride. Have you talked to Ann-Britt yet?”

“I haven’t had time.”

There was a pause. Wallander decided to be the first to bring it up. “That picture in the paper wasn’t too flattering, I suppose.”

“No.”

“The question is what a photographer was doing floating around the hallways like that. They’re always brought in as a group for the press conferences.”

“It’s strange that you didn’t notice someone taking pictures.”

“With today’s cameras it’s not so easy.”

“What happened, exactly?”

Wallander told him what had happened. He used exactly the same words that he had used when he talked to Holgersson. He didn’t add or omit anything.

“There were no witnesses?” Hansson asked.

“No one apart from the photographer, and he’s going to lie. Otherwise his picture wouldn’t be worth anything.”

“You’ll have to make a public rebuttal and tell your side.”

“And how well would that work? An aging police officer’s word against a mother and her daughter? It’ll never work.”

“You forget that this particular girl committed murder.”

Wallander wondered if that was really going to help. A policeman using excessive force was always a serious matter. That was his own opinion. It didn’t help that the details of the situation had been quite unusual.

“I’ll think about it,” he said, and asked Hansson to connect him with Nyberg.

Several minutes later, Nyberg came on the line. Wallander had taken a few more swigs from the whiskey bottle and was starting to feel tipsy, but the pressure was lifting from his chest.

“Have you seen the papers?” Wallander asked.

“Which paper?”

“The picture? The picture of Eva Persson?”

“I don’t read the evening papers, but I heard about it. I understand she had been in the process of attacking her mother.”

“That’s not what the picture indicates.”

“What does that matter?”

“It means I’m in big trouble. Lisa is going to set up a formal investigation.”

“So then the truth comes out. Isn’t that what you want?”

“I just wonder if the media will buy it. Who cares about an old policeman when there’s a young fresh-faced murderess involved?”

Nyberg sounded surprised. “Since when do you care what they write in the paper?”

“Maybe I still don’t. But it’s different when they publish a picture saying I’ve punched out a young girl.”

“But she’s committed murder.”

“It still makes me uncomfortable.”

“It’ll blow over. Look, I just wanted to confirm that one of the car prints was from Moberg’s car. That means all sets of car tracks have been accounted for except for one, but I can say that the unknown car is a common model.”

“So we know someone drove her out there. And left her.”

“There’s one other thing,” Nyberg said. “Her handbag.”

“What about it?”

“I’ve been trying to figure out why it was so far away, over by the fence.”

“Don’t you think he just threw it there?”

“But why? He couldn’t have expected us not to find it.”

Nyberg was right. This was important.

“You mean, why didn’t he just take it with him? Especially if he was hoping the body wouldn’t be identified.”

“Something like that.”

“What would the answer be?”

“That’s your job. I’m just telling you the facts. The handbag lay fifteen meters from the door of the transformer building.”

“Anything else?”

“No. We didn’t manage to get any other prints or tracks.”

The conversation was over. Wallander lifted up the bottle of whiskey but then quickly put it down. He had had enough. If he kept drinking he would cross a line he didn’t want to cross. He walked out into the living room. It felt strange to be home in the middle of the day. Was this what retirement would be like? The thought made him shiver. He walked over to the window and looked out at the street. It was already getting dark. He thought about the doctor who had paid him a visit, and about the man who had been found dead next to the cash machine. Wallander decided to call the pathologist the following day and tell him what Enander had said about not accepting a heart attack as the reason for Falk’s death. It wouldn’t change anything, but at least then he would have passed on the information.

He switched to thinking about what Nyberg had said about Sonja Hokberg’s handbag. There was really only one conclusion, and it was one that brought out his keenest investigative instincts. The bag lay there because someone had wanted it to be found.

Wallander sat back down in his sofa and thought it through. A body can be burned beyond recognition, he thought. Especially if it is burned with a high-voltage charge that can’t be controlled. A person who is executed in the electric chair is boiled from the inside out. Sonja Hokberg’s murderer knew it would be hard to identify her body. That’s why the handbag was left behind.

It still didn’t explain its position over by the fence, however. Wallander thought it all through again, but still could not come up with an explanation that accounted for this fact. He abandoned the question of the bag. In any case, he was proceeding too quickly. First they had to confirm that Sonja Hökberg had actually been murdered.

He returned to the kitchen and made some coffee. The phone was silent. It was four o’clock. He sat down at the kitchen table with his cup of coffee and called in again. Irene told him that the papers and TV had been calling all afternoon. She had not given out his phone number: it had been unlisted for a couple of years now. Wallander thought again that his absence was going to be interpreted as an admission of guilt, or at least as a sign of deep embarrassment about the matter. I should have stood my ground and stayed put, he thought. I should have talked to every damned reporter who called and told them the truth, that both Eva Persson and her mother were lying.

The moment of weakness was over. He was starting to get angry. He asked Irene to put him through to Hoglund. He should have started with Holgersson and told her once and for all that her suspicious attitude was unacceptable. But he put the phone down before there was an answer.

Right now he didn’t want to talk to either one of them.

Instead, he dialed Sten Widen’s number. By the time he picked up, Wallander had almost had time to regret it. But he was fairly sure Widen would not yet have seen the picture in the papers.

“I was thinking of stopping by,” Wallander said. “The only problem is, my car is broken.”

“I’ll pick you up if you like.”

They decided on seven o’clock. Wallander glanced in the direction of the whiskey bottle, but didn’t touch it.

The doorbell rang. Wallander jumped. No one ever came by his house unannounced. It was probably a reporter who had found his address somehow. He put the bottle of whiskey in a cabinet and opened the door. But it wasn’t a reporter. It was Hoglund.

“Is this a bad time?”

He stood by to let her in and turned his face away so she wouldn’t smell the alcohol on his breath. They sat down in the living room.

“I have a cold,” Wallander said. “I didn’t have the energy to keep working.”

She nodded, but he didn’t think for a second that she believed him. She had no reason to. Everyone knew Wallander always kept working in spite of whatever fevers or ailments he was suffering from.

“How are you holding up?” she asked.

The moment of wedkness is over, Wallander thought. Even if it just retreated for now and I know it’s still in there. But I’m not going to show it.

“If you’re referring to the picture in the paper, I know it looks bad. How can a photographer make his way unseen all the way into our interrogation rooms?”

“Lisa is very concerned.”

“She should listen to what I have to say,” Wallander said, “She should support me, not immediately believe everything they say in the paper.”

“She can’t just ignore what’s in the picture.”

“I’m not saying she should. I hit the girl, but only because she was laying into her mother.”

“You know of course that they have a different story.”

“They’re lying. But maybe you believe them?”

She shook her head.

“The question is only how to prove that they’re lying.”

“Who’s behind it?”

Her answer came quickly and firmly.

“The mother. I think she’s smart. She sees an opportunity to turn the attention away from her daughter’s deeds. And now that Sonja Hokberg is dead, they can try to pin everything on her.”

“Not the bloody knife.”

“Oh, but they can. Even though it was recovered with Eva’s help, she can claim that Sonja was the one who used it against Lundberg.”

Höglund was right. The dead can’t speak. And there was a large color photograph of a policeman who had knocked a girl to the ground. The picture was somewhat fuzzy, but no one could have any doubts as to what it depicted.

“The district attorney’s office has demanded as quick an investigation as possible.”

“Who in particular?”

“Viktorsson.”

Wallander didn’t like him. Viktorsson had only been in Ystad since August, but Wallander had already had a couple of run-ins with him.

“It’s going to be one person’s word against another.”

“Except that there’s two them, of course.”

“The strange thing is that Eva Persson doesn’t even like her mother,” Wallander said. “It was clear when I spoke to her.”

“She’s probably realized she’s in deep trouble, even though she’s a juvenile and won’t go to jail. Therefore she’s declared a temporary truce with her mother.”

Wallander suddenly felt he couldn’t keep talking about the subject any longer. Not right now.

“Why did you stop by?”

“I heard you were sick.”

“But not at death’s door. I’ll be back tomorrow. Tell me instead what you learned from your conversation with Eva Persson.”

“She’s changed her story.”

“But she can’t possibly know Sonja Hökberg is dead?”

“That’s what’s so strange.”

It took a while for Wallander to understand what Höglund had just said. Then it dawned on him. He looked at her.

“You’re thinking something?”

“Why does one change one’s story? Eva Persson couldn’t have known that Hökberg was dead when I started questioning her. But that’s when she changed her whole story. Now Hökberg is the one who did everything. Eva Persson is innocent. They were never going to rob a taxi driver. They weren’t going out to Rydsgard. Hökberg had suggested they visit her uncle who lived in Bjäresjö.”

“Does he exist?”

“I’ve called him. He claims he hasn’t seen Sonja in five or six years.”

Wallander thought this over.

“In that case, there’s only one explanation,” he said. “Eva Persson would never have been able to rescind her confession and fabricate another story if she wasn’t sure that Sonja would never be able to contradict it.”

“I can’t find another explanation either. Naturally I asked her why she hadn’t said all this earlier.”

“What was her answer?”

“That she hadn’t wanted all the blame to fall on Sonja.”

“Since they were friends?”

“Yes.”

They both knew what it meant. There was only one possible explanation: that Eva Persson knew that Sonja Hökberg was dead.

“What are you thinking?” Wallander asked.

“That there are two possibilities. One is that Sonja could have called Eva after she left the station. She could have told her she was planning to commit suicide.”

Wallander shook his head.

“That doesn’t sound likely.”

“I don’t think so either. I don’t think she called Eva Persson. I think she called someone else.”

“Someone who later called Eva Persson and told her Sonja was dead?”

“It’s possible.”

“Was anyone monitoring her calls?” Wallander asked.

“I asked Hansson to check the log. But she may still have her cell phone. It wouldn’t surprise me if no one thought to take it away from her.”

“This could mean that Eva Persson knows who killed Sonja. Assuming it was a murder.”

“Could it have been anything else?”

“It’s doubtful. But we have to wait for the autopsy report.”

“I tried to get a preliminary report, but I guess it takes time to work with badly burned bodies.”

“I hope they realize it’s urgent.”

“Isn’t it always?”

She looked down at her watch and got up.

“I have to get home to the kids.”

Wallander thought he should say something to her. He knew from his own life what a hellish experience it was to end a marriage.

“How are things going with the divorce proceedings?”

“You’ve been through it yourself. You know what it’s like.” Wallander walked her to the door.

“You should have a whiskey,” she said. “You need it.”

“I already have,” Wallander replied.

At seven o’clock, Wallander heard a car honk down below. Through his kitchen window he could see Sten Widen’s rusty old van. Wallander stuffed the whiskey bottle in a plastic bag and went down.

They drove out to the farm. As usual, Wallander asked to see the stables first. Many of the stalls were empty. A girl of about seventeen was hanging up a saddle when they came in. She finished and they were left alone. Wallander sat down on a bale of hay. Sten Widen leaned against a wall.

“I’m leaving,” he said. “The ranch has been put up for sale.”

“Who do you think will buy it?”

“Someone crazy enough to think he’ll make money on it.”

“Do you think you can get a good price?”

“No, but it will probably be enough. If I live cheaply I can probably survive on the interest.”

Wallander was curious to know how much money was involved, but couldn’t think of the right way to ask.

“Have you decided where to go?” he asked instead.

“First I have to sell. Then I’ll decide where to go.”

Wallander got out the bottle of whiskey.

“You’ll never be able to live without your horses,” he said. “What will you do?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re going to drink yourself to death.”

“Or else it’ll be just the opposite. Maybe that’s when I’ll be able to kick the bottle for good.”

They left the stables and walked across the yard to the house. It was a chilly evening. Wallander felt his usual pang of envy. Sten was on his way toward an unknown but surely different future. He, on the other hand, was splashed across the front pages of the paper for assaulting a fourteen-year-old girl.

Sweden has become a place that people try to escape from, he thought. The ones who can afford to. And those who can’t afford it join the hordes who scavenge for enough money to leave.

How had that happened? What had changed?

They sat down in the untidy living room that also served as an office. Widen poured himself a glass of cognac.

“I’ve been thinking about becoming a stage technician.”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I say. I could go to La Scala in Milan and work the curtain.”

“You don’t really think they operate the curtain by hand anymore, do you?”

“Well, I’m sure the occasional prop is still moved by hand. Think about being able to be backstage every night and hear that singing without paying a penny for it. I would even work for free.”

“Is that what you’re going to do?”

“No. I have a lot of ideas. Sometimes I even think about heading up to northern Sweden and burying myself in some cold and unpleasant heap of snow. I just don’t know. The only thing I know is that the ranch is going to be sold and I’ll have to go somewhere. What about you?”

Wallander shrugged without answering. He had had too much to drink. His head was starting to feel heavy.

“Are you still chasing moonshiners?”

Widen had a teasing tone in his voice. Wallander felt himself get angry.

“Murderers,” Wallander said, “People who kill others by crushing their heads with a hammer. I take it you heard about that taxi driver?”

“No.”

“Two little girls beat and stabbed a taxi driver to death the other day. They’re the kind of people I chase. Not moonshiners.”

“I don’t understand how you can keep at it.”

“I don’t either. But someone has to do it, and I probably do it as well as anybody else.”

Widen looked smilingly at him.

“You don’t have to get so defensive. Of course I think you’re an excellent policeman. I’ve always thought so. I just wonder if you’re going to make time for anything else in your life.”

“I’m not a quitter.”

“Like me?”

Wallander didn’t answer. He was suddenly aware of the distance between them and wondered how long it had really been there without their knowing it. Once upon a time they had been very close. Then they had grown up and gone their separate ways. When they’d met up years later, they thought they could build on the friendship they’d once had. They had never seen that the continuation of that friendship was totally different. Only now could Wallander see it clearly. Widen had probably also come to the same conclusion.

“One of the girls who killed this taxi driver had a stepfather,” Wallander said. “Erik Hökberg.”

Widen looked at him with surprise.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. It looks like the girl has now been murdered herself. I don’t have the time to take off, even if I wanted to.”

He tucked the whiskey bottle back into the plastic bag.

“Could you call a cab for me?”

“Are you going already?”

“I think so.”

A wave of disappointment washed over Widen’s face. Wallander felt the same. Their friendship had come to an end. Or rather: they had finally discovered that it had ended a long time ago.

“I’ll take you home.”

“No,” Wallander said. “You’ve had some drinks.”

Widen didn’t argue. He went over to the phone and called the cab company.

“It’ll be here in ten minutes.”

They went out. It was a clear fall evening with no wind.

“What did we expect?” Widen said suddenly. “When we were young, I mean.”

“I’ve forgotten. But I’m not the kind to look back very often. I have enough on my hands with the present, and my worries for the future.”

The taxi arrived.

“Make sure you write and tell me what happens,” Wallander said.

“Will do.”

Wallander climbed into the back seat.

The car drove through the darkness toward Ystad.

Wallander had just stepped into his apartment when the phone rang. It was Höglund.

“Are you home now? I’ve tried to call you a million times. Why isn’t your cell phone turned on?”

“What’s happened?”

“I tried the coroner’s office in Lund again. I spoke to the pathologist. He didn’t want to be held to this, but he’s found something. Sonja Hökberg had a skull fracture in the back of the head.”

“Was she dead when she hit the power lines?”

“Maybe not, but probably unconscious.”

“Could she have hurt herself somehow?”

“He was pretty sure it could not have been self-inflicted.”

“That settles it,” Wallander said. “She was murdered.”

“Haven’t we known that all along?”

“No,” Wallander said. “We suspected it, but we haven’t known it until now.”

Somewhere in the background a child started crying. Höglund was in a hurry to get off the phone. They arranged to meet at eight the next morning.

Wallander sat down at the kitchen table. He thought about Widen and Sonja Hökberg, but above all about Eva Persson.

She must knozu, he thought. She knows who killed Sonja Hökberg.

Chapter Ten

Wallander was catapulted from sleep at around five o’clock on Thursday morning. As soon as he opened his eyes in the dark he knew what had awakened him. It was something that had slipped his mind: his promise to Hoglund. Today was the day he was supposed to give a speech at the Ystad women’s literary society about life as a police officer.

He lay paralyzed in the darkness. How could he have forgotten about it so completely? He had nothing prepared, not even any scribbled notes.

He felt the anxiety grip in his stomach. The women he was going to address would almost certainly have seen the pictures of Eva Persson. And Hoglund must have called them by now to tell them he was speaking in her place.

I can’t do it, he thought. All they are going to see is a brutal man who assaulted a young girl. Not the person I actually am. Whoever that is.

As he lay in bed he tried to plot a way out of his dilemma, but he soon realized there was no way to get out of this. He got up at five-thirty and sat down at the kitchen table with a pad of paper in front of him. He wrote the word Lecture at the top of the page. He asked himself what Rydberg would have told a group of women about his work, but in the back of his mind he suspected that Rydberg would never have gotten himself roped into something like this in the first place.

By six o’clock he had still only written that one word. He was about to give up when he had a sudden thought. He could tell them about what they were involved in right now: the investigation of the taxi driver’s death. He could even start by telling them about Stefan Fredman’s funeral. A few days in a policeman’s life — the way it really was, without any editing. He made a few notes. He wouldn’t be able to avoid the whole incident with the photographer, and so his speech could seem like a defense. But in a way of course it was. It was a chance for him to tell it the way it had happened.

He put down his pen at a quarter past six. He was still anxious about the evening, but he no longer felt quite so helpless. He called the repair place and asked about his car. The conversation was depressing. Apparently they were considering taking the whole engine apart. The clerk promised to call him with a price quote later that day.

The thermometer outside read seven degrees Celsius. There were a soft wind and some clouds, but no rain. Wallander watched an old man slowly walking down the street. He stopped by a garbage can and leafed through its contents with one hand without finding anything. Wallander thought back to his visit with Widen. All traces of envy were gone. It had been replaced by a vague sense of melancholy. Widen was going to disappear from his life. Who was left who connected him to his earlier life? Soon there would be no one.

Wallander forced himself to halt this train of thought and left the apartment. On his way to the station he kept thinking about what he should say in his speech. A patrol car pulled up alongside him and the officer asked him if he wanted a ride. Wallander thanked him but declined the offer. He wanted to walk.

A man was waiting for him in the reception area. When Wallander walked past, the man turned to face him. Wallander recognized his face but was unable to place it in a context.

“Kurt Wallander,” he said. “Do you have a minute?”

“That depends. Who are you?”

“Harald Törngren.”

Wallander shook his head.

“I was the one who took the picture.”

Wallander realized he remembered the man’s face from the press conference.

“You mean, you were the one skulking around the hallway.”

Harald Törngren smiled. He was in his thirties and had a long face and short hair.

“I was looking for a bathroom and no one stopped me.”

“What do you want?”

“I thought you might like to comment on the picture. I’d like to interview you.”

“You’d never write what I say anyway.”

“How do you know that?”

Wallander thought about asking Törngren to leave. But he saw an opportunity and decided to take it.

“I want a third party present,” he said.

Törngren kept smiling.

“A witness to the interview?”

“I’ve had bad experiences with reporters before.”

“As far as I’m concerned, you’re welcome to have ten witnesses.”

Wallander looked down at his watch. It was twenty-five minutes past seven.

“I’ll give you half an hour. No more.”

“When?”

“Right now.”

They walked in together. Irene said that Martinsson had already come in. Wallander told Törngren to wait while he went to Martinsson’s office. He was doing something on his computer. Wallander quickly explained the situation.

Martinsson seemed to hesitate.

“As long as you don’t flare up.”

“Do I usually say things I don’t mean?” Wallander objected.

“It happens.”

Martinsson was right.

“I’ll keep it in mind. Come on.”

They sat down in one of the smaller conference rooms. Törngren put his little tape recorder on the table. Martinsson kept himself in the background.

“I spoke to Eva Persson’s mother last night,” Törngren said. “They have decided to press charges against you.”

“For what?”

“For assault. What’s your reaction?”

“There was never any question of assault.”

“That’s not what they say. And I have a picture of what happened.”

“Do you want to know what happened?”

“I’d be delighted to hear your version.”

“It’s not a version. It’s the truth.”

“It’s their word against yours, you know.”

Wallander was starting to realize the impossibility of what he was trying to do and regretted allowing the interview. But it was too late now. He simply told Törngren him what happened. Eva Persson had attacked her mother and Wallander had tried to separate them. The girl had been wild. He had slapped her.

“Both the mother and the girl deny this.”

“Nonetheless, it’s what actually happened.”

“Do you really expect me to believe that she started hitting her mother?”

“Eva Persson had just confessed to murder. It was a tense moment. At such times unexpected things can happen.”

“Eva Persson told me last night that she had been forced to confess.”

Wallander and Martinsson looked at each other.

“Forced?”

“That’s what I said.”

“And who forced her to do this?”

“The officers who interrogated her.”

Martinsson was upset.

“That’s the damndest thing I ever heard,” he said. “We most certainly do not coerce anyone during our interrogations.”

“I’m just repeating what she said. She now denies everything. She says she’s innocent.”

Wallander looked hard at Martinsson, who didn’t say anything else. Wallander felt completely calm.

“The pre-investigation is far from complete,” he said. “Eva Persson is tied to the crime, and even if she has decided to retract her confession it doesn’t change anything at this point.”

“You’re saying she’s lying.”

“I can’t answer that.”

“Why not?”

“Because in order to do so I would have to reveal information about an ongoing investigation. Information that is still classified.”

“But you are claiming she’s lying?”

“Those are your words. I can only tell you what actually happened.”

Wallander was starting to see the headlines. But he knew what he was doing was right. Eva Persson and her mother were cunning, but it wasn’t likely to help them in the long run. Nor would exaggerated and emotional newspaper coverage.

“The girl is very young,” Törngren said. “She claims she was pulled into these tragic events by her much older friend. Doesn’t that sound plausible? Couldn’t Eva Persson be telling the truth?”

Wallander considered telling the truth about Sonja Hökberg. The most recent events had not yet been made public, but he decided against saying anything. It would still give him an advantage.

“You and your newspaper are not the ones in charge of this investigation. We are. If you wish to draw your own conclusions and arrive at your own judgment, we can’t stop you. But the reality is probably going to turn out to be something quite different. Not that it will be given much space in your paper.”

Wallander let his hands fall palms down on the table to signal the end of the interview.

“Thank you for your time,” Törngren said and started putting his tape recorder away.

“Martinsson will show you out,” Wallander said.

He left the room without shaking hands. While he was getting his mail he tried to judge how the interview with Törngren had gone. Was there something he should have added? Was there something he should have expressed differently? He carried a cup of coffee back to his office with the mail tucked under his arm. He decided that the conversation with Törngren had gone well, even if he couldn’t control what eventually showed up in the newspaper report. He sat down and started going through the mail. There was nothing that couldn’t wait. He reminded himself of Enander’s visit, shuffled through his notes in the top desk drawer, and called the coroner’s office in Lund. He was lucky and was immediately put through to the pathologist in question. Wallander briefly described Enander’s visit. The pathologist listened carefully and took down the relevant information. He ended the conversation after he had promised to notify Wallander if any of the new information was likely to lead to the revision of the conclusions of the autopsy.

At eight o’clock, Wallander got up and went to the large conference room. Lisa Holgersson was already there, as well as the attorney Lennart Viktorsson. Wallander felt a surge of adrenaline when he caught sight of him. Most people would probably keep a low profile after ending up on the front page of the newspaper. Wallander had gone through his moment of weakness the day before when he left the station early. But now he was ready for battle. He sat down in his chair and started speaking.

“As you all know, the evening papers ran a photograph of Eva Persson last night in which she had fallen down because I had slapped her. Although both the girl and her mother claim otherwise, what happened was that the girl was hitting her mother in the face and I was trying to intervene. She was in a fury. To snap her out of it, I slapped her. It was just hard enough to knock her off balance and she fell. This is also what I told the reporter who snuck into the station. I met with him this morning, as Martinsson can report.”

He paused before continuing and looked around at the people gathered at the table. Chief Holgersson seemed put out. He sensed that she had wanted to be the one to bring it up.

“I’ve been told that there will be an internal investigation of the matter, which is fine with me. But now I think we should turn our attention to the matter at hand: Lundberg’s murder and sorting out what actually happened to Sonja Hökberg.”

Holgersson started speaking as soon as he was finished. Wallander didn’t like the expression on her face. He still felt like she was letting him down.

“I think it goes without saying that you will no longer be allowed to question Eva Persson,” she said.

Wallander nodded.

“Even I understand that much.”

I should really have said more, he thought. That a police officer’s first duty is to stand by his colleagues — not uncritically, not at any price. But as long as it is a question of one person’s word against another. This lie is easier for her than standing up for the uncomfortable truth.

Viktorsson lifted his hand and interrupted Wallander’s train of thought.

“I will of course be following this internal investigation very closely, and I suggest that we consider Eva Persson’s new version of the events seriously. It’s quite possible that things happened as she says, that Sonja Hökberg was solely responsible for the planning and execution of the assault.”

Wallander couldn’t believe his ears. He looked around the room, trying to elicit support from his closest colleagues. Hansson, in his checkered flannel shirt, looked lost in thought. Martinsson was rubbing his chin, and Höglund was slumped in her chair. No one met his gaze, but he decided to interpret from what he saw that they were still with him.

“Eva Persson is lying,” he said. “Her first story is the true one. That’s the version we will also be able to prove, if we get down to business and do our jobs.”

Viktorsson wanted to go on, but Wallander didn’t let him. He doubted that most people had been informed of what Höglund had called him about last night.

“Sonja Hökberg was murdered,” he said. “The pathologist has informed us that fractures consistent with a strong blow to the back of the head have been found. It may have been the cause of death; at the very least it knocked her unconscious. Thereafter she was thrown in among the power lines. At any rate, we no longer need to have any doubts about whether or not she was murdered.”

He had been correct. Everyone in the room was surprised.

“I should emphasize that this is the pathologist’s preliminary report,” he continued. “There may be more information forthcoming.”

No one said anything, and he felt he had control of the proceedings now. The photograph in the papers nagged at him and gave him renewed energy. But he still couldn’t get over Holgersson’s open distrust of him.

He continued to give a thorough overview of the investigation to date.

“Johan Lundberg was murdered in what appears to be a hastily planned and executed robbery. The girls have said they needed money, but not for anything in particular. They make no attempts to conceal themselves from the police after the deed. When we bring them in, both of them confess almost immediately. Their stories are consistent with each other and neither one of them appears repentant. We also find the murder weapons. Then Sonja Hõkberg escapes from the police station in what seems like a spur-of-the-moment decision. Twelve hours later she turns up murdered in one of the Sydkraft power substations. Establishing how she got there will be of crucial importance for us. We also don’t know why she was murdered. But parallel to these events, something else happens that must also be considered crucial: Eva Persson recants her earlier confession. She now lays the entire blame for what happened on Sonja. She gives new information that cannot be checked because Sonja is now dead. The question is how Eva Persson knew this — and she must have known it. Information about the murder has still not been publicly released. The people who know about it are very few in number; yesterday that number was even smaller. Yet that was when Eva Persson suddenly changed her story.”

Wallander finished and sat back in his chair. The level of attentiveness in the room had risen sharply. Wallander had managed to isolate the decisive issues.

“What did Sonja Hökberg do when she left the station?” Hansson asked. “That’s what we need to find out.”

“We know she didn’t walk to the substation,” Wallander said. “Even if it will be hard for us to prove with one-hundred-percent certainty. But we have to assume she was driven.”

“Aren’t we proceeding a little too quickly?” Viktorsson asked. “She could have been dead when she got there.”

“I haven’t finished yet,” Wallander said. “Of course that is a possibility.”

“Is there anything that speaks against this assumption?”

“No.”

“Isn’t it in fact the most logical conclusion? What reasons do we have to assume she went there willingly?”

“Only that she knew the person who drove her there.”

Viktorsson shook his head.

“Why would anyone seek out a power substation located in the middle of a field? Wasn’t it raining the whole time? Doesn’t this tell us that she was in fact killed somewhere entirely different?”

“You’re proceeding too quickly,” Wallander said. “We’re trying to lay all the alternatives on the table. We shouldn’t be zeroing in on any of them just yet.”

“Who gave her the ride?” Martinsson said. “If we know that, we’ll know who killed her, even if we still don’t know why.”

“That will have to come later,” Wallander said. “My thought is that Eva Persson couldn’t have found out about Sonja’s death through anyone other than the person who killed her. Or, at the very least, from a witness.”

He looked over at Holgersson.

“That means Eva Persson is our key to figuring out what happened. She’s a juvenile and she’s lying, but now we have to turn up the heat. I want to know how she learned of Sonja’s death.”

He stood up.

“Since I won’t be involved in Eva Persson’s questioning, I’ll be attending to other matters in the meantime.”

He quickly left the room, pleased with his exit. He knew it was a childish display, but he also thought it would hit its mark. He assumed Höglund would be the one who would be given the responsibility of talking to Eva Persson. She knew what to ask; he didn’t have to prepare her.

Wallander picked up his coat and left. He would be using his time to check something else. Before leaving the station he tucked two photographs from the case file into his pocket. He walked down toward the center of town. One aspect of the whole case had continued to bother him: Why had Sonja Hökberg been killed, and why had it taken place in such a way as to cut power to large parts of Scania? Had that really been a coincidence?

He crossed the main square and ended up on Hamngatan. The restaurant where Sonja and Eva had had their beers wasn’t open yet. He peeked in through a window. There was someone in there, and it was a man he recognized. He knocked on the pane of glass. The man continued his work behind the counter. Wallander knocked harder and the man looked up. When he recognized Wallander he smiled and opened the door.

“It’s not even nine o’clock yet,” he said. “Do you want pizza already?”

“Sort of,” Wallander said. “A cup of coffee would be nice. I need to talk to you.”

Istvan Kecskemeti had come to Sweden from Hungary in 1956. He had operated a number of restaurants in Ystad, and Wallander had made it a habit to eat at one of them when he didn’t have the energy to cook for himself. He talked a lot at times, but Wallander liked him. He was also one of the few people who knew about Wallander’s diabetes.

“You don’t stop by very often,” Istvan said. “When you come, we’re closed. That means you want something other than food.”

He raised his arms and sighed.

“Everyone comes to Istvan for help. Sports clubs and charities, someone who wants to start,a cemetery for animals — they all want money. They all promise some advertising in return. But how is advertising in a pet cemetery going to help a pizzeria?”

He sighed again before continuing.

“Perhaps you also want something? Do you want me to give a donation to the Swedish police force?”

“Answers to a couple of questions will do fine,” Wallander said. “Last Wednesday — were you here?”

“I’m always here. But last Wednesday is a while ago.”

Wallander put the two photographs on the table. The lighting was poor.

“See if you recognize either one of these faces.”

Istvan took the photographs with him to the bar area. He looked at them for a long time before he returned.

“I think so.”

“Did you hear about the taxi murder?”

“A terrible thing — how can it happen? And such young people.” Istvan suddenly understood the connection.

“These two?”

“Yes. And they were here that evening. It’s very important that you tell me everything you remember. Where they sat, who they were with, that kind of thing.” Istvan clearly wanted to be of help. He strained to remember that evening, while Wallander waited. Istvan picked up the photographs and started walking around the restaurant. He walked slowly and searchingly. He’s looking for his guests, Wallander thought. He’s doing exactly what I would have done. The question is whether he’ll find them.

István stopped by a table close to the window. Wallander got up and walked over to it.

“I think they sat here,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Who sat in which seat?”

Istvan looked troubled. Wallander waited again while Istvan walked around the table a couple of times. Then, as if he were handing out menus, he put down the photographs of Sonja Hökberg and Eva Persson in front of their seats.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

But Wallander saw him wrinkle his brow. He was still trying to remember something.

“There was something that happened that evening,” he said. “I remember them because I had doubts about one of them being eighteen years old.”

“She wasn’t,” Wallander said. “But forget it.”

Wallander waited. He saw how Istvan was struggling to remember. “Something happened that evening,” he repeated.

Then he suddenly remembered what it was. “They switched,” he said. “At one point that evening, they switched seats.”

Wallander sat down in the chair where Sonja Hökberg had spent the first part of the evening. From that seat, he could see a wall and the window facing out onto the street. But most of the restaurant was behind him. When he switched seats he saw the front door. Since a pillar and a booth hid most of the rest of the room, he only had a clear view of one table. It was a table for two.

“Did anyone sit there?” he asked and pointed to the table. “Did anyone sit down at the same time as the girls switched seats?”

Istvan thought back.

“Actually, yes,” he said. “Someone did come in and sit there, but I’m not sure if it was when they changed seats or not.”

Wallander realized he was holding his breath.

“Can you describe him? Did you know who he was?”

“I had never seen him before, but he’s easy to describe.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he was Chinese. Or at least he looked Asian.”

Wallander was quiet. This could be important.

“Did he stay here after the girls left in the taxi?”

“Yes, at least an hour.”

“Did they have any kind of contact?”

Istvan shook his head.

“I don’t know. I didn’t notice anything, but it’s possible.”

“Do you remember how the man paid his bill?”

“I think it was by credit card, but I’m not sure.”

“Good,” Wallander said. “I want you to find that charge slip.”

“I’ve already sent it in. I think it was American Express.”

“Then we’ll find your copy,” Wallander said.

He felt a sense of urgency. Sonja Hökberg saw someone walking down the street, he thought. She changed places in order to see him. He was Asian.

“What is it you’re looking for?” Istvan asked.

“I’m just trying to understand what must have happened,” Wallander said. “I haven’t gotten any further than that.”

He said goodbye to Istvan and left the restaurant.

A man of Asian descent, he thought.

He sensed that he was close to something important. He sped up. He was in a hurry.

Chapter Eleven

When Wallander arrived at the station he was out of breath. He had walked quickly because he knew Höglund was in the process of interrogating Eva Persson. He had to tell her what he had learned at István’s restaurant so he could get her to ask the questions that now needed to be asked. Irene handed him a large heap of phone messages that he shoved unread into his pocket. He called the room where Höglund was questioning Eva Persson.

“I’m almost done here,” she said.

“Not so fast,” Wallander said. “I have a few more questions for you. Take a break. I’ll drop by.”

She seemed to sense that it was important and promised to do as he asked. Wallander was waiting impatiently for her in the hallway when she emerged from the room. He got right to the point, telling her about the seat changes and the man who had been sitting at the only table that Sonja Hökberg had a clear view of. When he finished, he saw that she was not convinced.

“An Asian man?”

“Yes.”

“Do you really think this is important?”

“Sonja Hökberg changed seats because she wanted to have eye contact with someone. That has to mean something.”

She shrugged.

“I’ll talk to her about it. But what is it exactly that you want an answer to?”

“Why they changed places, and when. Try to see if she’s lying. And did she notice the man who sat behind her?”

“It’s hard to see anything going on inside her.”

“Is she sticking to her new story?”

“Sonja Hökberg both hit and stabbed Lundberg. Eva Persson knew nothing in advance.”

“How did she react when you told her Sonja is dead?”

“She tried to act sad, but didn’t do a very good job. I think actually she was quite shocked.”

“So you don’t think she knew anything?”

“No.”

Höglund got up to continue her work. She turned around in the doorway.

“The mother has hired a lawyer. He’s already filed charges against you. His name is Klas Harrysson.”

Wallander didn’t recognize the name.

“He’s a young ambitious lawyer from Malmö. He seems very sure of himself.”

Wallander was overcome by a wave of tiredness. Then the anger came back, as well as the feeling of being treated unfairly.

“Did you get anything new out of her?”

“I honestly think Eva Persson is a little stupid, but she’s sticking to her story — the later version — and she’s not changing anything. She sounds like a recording.”

Wallander shook his head.

“There’s something deeper going on with Lundberg’s murder,” he said. “I’m convinced of it.”

Hoglund returned to continue questioning Eva Persson and Wallander went back to his room. He tried to find Martinsson without success. Hansson wasn’t in, either. Then he leafed through the telephone messages that Irene had handed to him. Most of the callers were reporters, but there was also a message from Tynnes Falk’s ex-wife. Wallander put the message aside, then called Irene and told her to hold all incoming calls for a while. He called information and was given the phone number for the American Express office. He started to explain what he wanted and was transferred to someone called Anita. She asked to return his call as a security check. Wallander put down the phone and waited. After a few minutes he remembered that he had asked Irene to hold all incoming calls. He swore and dialed the American Express number. This time they managed to arrange the security callback and Wallander was finally able to ask for the information he needed.

“I hope you realize it will take us some time to do this,” Anita said.

“As long as you understand how important it is.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

When the conversation was over, Wallander immediately called the car shop. After a few minutes, the clerk he had spoken with came on the line and quoted him a price that made him speechless. He was told the car would be ready the following day. It was the replacement parts that were expensive, not the labor. Wallander agreed to come and pick up the car at twelve.

He remained idle for a while after putting the receiver down. In his thoughts he was in the interrogation room with Höglund. It bothered him that he couldn’t be there. Höglund could be a bit soft when it came to applying real pressure. Moreover, he had been unfairly treated by Holgersson. She had not given him the benefit of the doubt, something he couldn’t forgive her for.

To get the time to pass, he dialed the number for Tynnes Falk’s ex-wife. She picked up almost immediately.

“This is Wallander. Am I speaking with Marianne Falk?”

“I’m so glad you called. I’ve been waiting for you.”

She had a high-pitched, pleasant-sounding voice. It occurred to Wallander that she sounded like Mona. He felt a distant, brief pull of emotion. Was it sadness?

“Has Dr. Enander been in touch with you?” she asked.

“I’ve talked to him.”

“Then you know Tynnes didn’t die of a heart attack.”

“I’m not sure we can rule out that possibility.”

“Why not? He was attacked.”

She sounded very firm. Wallander’s curiosity was piqued.

“You don’t sound surprised.”

“I’m not. Tynnes had many enemies.”

Wallander pulled a pen and some paper toward him.

“What kind of enemies?”

“I don’t know. But he was constantly on guard.”

Wallander searched his memory for the information that had been in Martinsson’s report.

“He was some kind of computer consultant, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t sound so dangerous.”

“I think it depends on what you do.”

“And what did he do, exactly?”

“I don’t know.”

“And yet you’re convinced he was attacked?”

“I knew him well, although we didn’t live together. This past year he was especially anxious.”

“But he never told you why?”

She hesitated before answering.

“I know it sounds very strange that I can’t be more specific,” she said, “even though we lived together for a long time and had two children.”

“‘Enemy’ is a strong word to throw around in casual conversation.”

“Tynnes traveled extensively. He had always done so. I have no idea what people he must have met, but sometimes he came home very excited. At other times when I met him at Sturup airport he was clearly worried.”

“But he must have said something, like why he had enemies, or who they were?”

“He was a quiet man. But I could read the deep-seated anxiety in his face.”

Wallander started wondering if the woman he was speaking to wasn’t a bit high-strung.

“Was there anything else?”

“It wasn’t a heart attack. I want the police to find out what really happened.”

Wallander thought for a moment before answering.

“I’ve made a note of what you’ve said. We’ll be in touch if we need to ask you anything else.”

“I’m expecting you to find out what happened. We were divorced, Tynnes and I, but I still loved him.”

The conversation was over. Wallander wondered briefly if Mona would also say she still loved him, though they were divorced and she was now married to another man. He doubted it. Then he wondered if she had ever really loved him. He brushed these thoughts aside angrily and went through in his head what Marianne Falk had told him. Her sense of anxiety seemed genuine. But she had not really been able to say anything concrete. He still didn’t have a clear sense of who Tynnes Falk had been. Wallander looked for Martinsson’s report, then called the coroner’s office in Lund. The whole time, he was listening for Höglund’s footsteps outside his door. It was the conversation with Eva Persson that was his primary interest right now. Tynnes Falk had died of a heart attack, and that fact wasn’t altered by an ex-wife who was convinced he had been surrounded by enemies. Wallander spoke once more with the pathologist who had conducted the autopsy on Tynnes Falk. He told him about his conversation with Marianne Falk.

“It’s not unheard of that heart attacks come seemingly from out of nowhere,” the pathologist said. “The autopsy clearly revealed this as the cause of death. Neither Falk’s wife’s words nor what his doctor said changes my view in any way.”

“And the head wound?”

“That was caused by hitting the asphalt.”

Wallander thanked him and hung up. As he closed Martinsson’s report, he had the nagging feeling that he had overlooked something, but he decided to ignore it. He couldn’t spend time worrying about the products of other people’s imagination.

He poured himself another cup of coffee in the lunchroom. It was almost half past eleven. Martinsson and Hansson were still out. No one knew where they were. Wallander returned to his office, impatient and irritated. Widen’s decision to get out was needling him. It was as if he had ended up in a race he never thought he could win, but one in which he also didn’t want to end up last. It was an unclear thought, but he knew what was bothering him. He felt that time was rushing away from him.

“I can’t live like this,” he said out loud to himself. “Something has to change.”

“Who are you talking to?”

Wallander turned around. Martinsson stood in the doorway. Wallander hadn’t heard him come in. No one at the station moved as quietly as Martinsson.

“I was speaking to myself,” Wallander said firmly. “Don’t you ever do that?”

“I talk in my sleep, according to my wife. Maybe that’s the same thing.”

“What do you want?”

“I’ve checked everyone who had access to the substation keys. No one has a previous record with us.”

“Not that we expected them to,” Wallander said.

“I’ve been trying to figure out why the gates were forced,” Martinsson said. “I can only think of two possibilities: one, that the key to the gates was missing. Two, someone’s trying to confuse us and throw us off the track.”

“For what reason?”

“Vandalism, destruction for its own sake, I don’t know.”

Wallander shook his head.

“The steel door was unlocked. As I far as I can tell, there’s also the possibility that the person who forced the gates was not the same person who unlocked the door.”

Martinsson wrinkled his brow.

“And how would you explain that?”

“I can’t explain it. I’m only presenting you with another alternative.”

The conversation died away and Martinsson left. It was twelve o’clock. Wallander continued to wait. Höglund turned up at twenty-five minutes past twelve.

“One thing you can’t accuse that girl of is talking too fast,” she said.

“I’ve never heard a young person who talked so slowly.”

“Maybe she was afraid of saying the wrong thing,” Wallander said. Höglund sat down in his visitor’s chair.

“I asked her about what you told me,” she began. “But she never saw a Chinese person.”

“I didn’t say Chinese, I said Asian.”

“Well, she never saw anyone like that. They changed seats because Sonja complained about a cold draft from the window.”

“How did she react when you asked her that question?” Höglund looked worried.

“Just as you would expect. The question took her by surprise and her answer was a pure lie.”

Wallander hit the table.

“Then we know,” he said. “There’s a connection here to the man who came into the restaurant.”

“What kind of connection?”

“We don’t know. But it certainly wasn’t an impulse murder.”

“I just don’t know how we’re going to get any further.”

Wallander told her about his call to the American Express office.

“That will give us a name,” he said. “And if we have a name, we will have made good progress. While we’re waiting on that, I’d like you to visit Persson’s home. I want you to take a look at her bedroom. And where’s her father?”

Höglund checked her notes.

“His name is Hugo Lövström. According to his daughter, he’s a homeless drunk. She’s filled with hate, that girl. I don’t know who she hates more, her mother or her father.”

“They have no regular contact?”

“It doesn’t look like it.”

Wallander thought about it.

“We don’t see clearly yet,” he said. “We have to find the real reasons behind all this. It may be that I’m simply too naive, that young people today — even girls — don’t see anything wrong with murdering people. In that case, I give up. But not just yet. Something else must have driven them to do this.”

“Maybe we should be looking at it from all angles,” Höglund said.

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe we should be looking a little more closely at Lundberg.”

“Why? They couldn’t have known who their taxi driver was going to be.”

“You’re right.”

But Wallander saw that she was thinking about something. He waited.

“There’s just this possibility,” she said thoughtfully, “that maybe it was an impulsive act after all. They ordered a taxi. Perhaps one or both of them suddenly recognized Lundberg.”

Wallander saw what she was getting at.

“You’re right,” he said. “There is that possibility.”

“We know the girls were armed,” she said, “with both a hammer and a knife. It seems as if all young people these days carry some kind of weapon. The girls realize that Lundberg is their driver. Then they kill him. It could have happened like this, even if it seems unlikely.”

“Not more unlikely than anything else,” Wallander said. “Let’s try to establish if they had any earlier contact with Lundberg.”

Höglund got up and left. Wallander reached for his pad of paper and tried to jot down the basic outline of what Hoglund had said. At one o’clock, he still felt as if he had not gotten any further. He was hungry and walked out to the lunchroom to see if there were any sandwiches left. They were gone. He picked up his coat from his office and left the station. This time he had remembered to bring his cell phone and to instruct Irene to let calls from American Express through. He went to the diner closest to the station. He noticed that customers there recognized him. He was sure that the picture in the paper had been a topic of discussion in most Ystad homes. He felt self-conscious and ate in a hurry. When he was back on the street his phone rang. It was Anita.

“We’ve found the information you were looking for,” she said. “The card number belongs to someone called Fu Cheng.”

Wallander stopped and wrote it down on a scrap of paper in his pocket.

“It’s a Hong Kong-based account,” she continued. “There’s only one problem. It’s a false account.”

Wallander frowned.

“He stole it?”

“Worse. The account is completely fabricated. American Express has never opened an account with Fu Cheng.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, it’s good that we discovered it so quickly. The restaurant owner will unfortunately not get his money. Hopefully he has fraud insurance.”

“Does that mean Fu Cheng doesn’t exist?”

“Oh, I’m sure he exists, but he has a fake credit card, as well as a fake address.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this from the start?”

“That’s what I was trying to do.”

Wallander thanked her and hung up. A man who maybe came from Hong Kong had turned up at István’s restaurant in Ystad and paid with a fake credit card. At some point he had made eye contact with Sonja Hökberg.

He hurried back to the office. He could no longer put off the next task: preparing the lecture he had promised to give. Even though he had decided to speak plainly about the murder investigation he was involved in, he still needed to write down the points he wanted to touch on. Otherwise his nervousness would get the better of him.

He started writing but had trouble concentrating. The image of Sonja Hökberg’s charred body kept returning. He reached for the phone and called Martinsson.

“See if you find anything on Eva Persson’s father,” he said. “Hugo Lövström. He’s supposed to live in Växjö. A homeless alcoholic, apparently.”

“In that case it’ll be easier to locate him through our colleagues in Växjö,” Martinsson replied. “I’m also in the process of checking out Lundberg.”

“Did you think of that on your own?” Wallander was surprised.

“Höglund asked me to. She’s just left to go check out Eva Persson’s home. I don’t know exactly what she expects to find.”

“I have another name for your computers,” Wallander said. “Fu Cheng.”

“What was that?”

Wallander spelled it.

“Who’s that?”

“I’ll explain later. We should have a meeting this afternoon. I suggest half past four. It’ll be short.”

“His name is Fu Cheng? That’s it?” Martinsson asked.

Wallander didn’t bother to reply.

Wallander used the rest of the afternoon to plan his lecture. After working on it for only a short while, he had already started to hate what he had written. The year before, he had given a lecture at the National Police Academy about his experiences as a crime fighter. It had been a complete disaster in his own opinion. But many students had come up to him afterward to thank him. He had never been able to figure out what they were thanking him for.

At half past four he gave up. Now it was up to fate. He picked up his notes and headed for the conference room. No one was there yet. He tried to gather his thoughts and come up with a clear summary of the events of the case so far, but he was distracted.

It doesn’t hang together, he thought. Lundberg’s murder doesn’t fit with these two girls. Nor does Sonja’s murder. This whole investigation lacks a common foundation, even though we know what happened. What we don’t have is the crucial “why. ”

Hansson arrived with Martinsson in tow, and Höglund came in behind them. Wallander was glad that Holgersson didn’t turn up. It was a short meeting. Höglund told them about her visit to Eva Persson’s house.

“Everything seemed very normal,” she said. “It’s an apartment on Stödgatan. Her mother works as a cook at the hospital. The girl’s room was what you’d expect.”

“Did she have any posters on the wall?” Wallander asked.

“Just some pop stars I didn’t recognize,” Höglund said. “But nothing unusual. Why do you ask?”

Wallander didn’t answer.

The transcript of Höglund’s conversation with Eva Persson was already prepared and Höglund distributed copies to everyone. Wallander told them of his visit to István’s restaurant and the subsequent discovery of the stolen credit card.

“We need to find this man,” he said. “If for no other reason than to be able to effectively rule out any involvement on his part with this case.

They continued to sift through the day’s work. Martinsson told them what he had done, then Hansson. Hansson had talked to Kalle Ryss, whom Eva Persson had called Sonja’s boyfriend. But he hadn’t said anything of interest, other than that he knew very little about Sonja.

“He said she was very secretive,” Hansson said. “Whatever that means.”

After twenty minutes, Wallander tried to sum up the state of the investigation. He stressed the fact that he thought they had more work ahead of them than they expected.

The meeting was over shortly before five. Höglund wished him good luck.

“They’re going to accuse me of being a violent misogynist,” Wallander complained.

“I don’t think so. You have a good reputation.”

“I thought that was destroyed a long time ago.”

Wallander went home. There was a letter from Per Akeson in Sudan. He put it on the kitchen table to be opened later. Then he showered and changed. He left the apartment at six-thirty and walked to the place where he was supposed to meet all these unknown women. He stood for a moment staring up at the lighted house before he had the courage to enter.

When he reemerged from the house it was past nine o’clock. He was drenched in sweat. He had talked longer than he had planned to, and there had been more questions than he had expected. But the women there had inspired him. Most of them were his age, and their attentions had flattered him. When he left, part of him had actually wanted to stay longer.

He walked home slowly. He hardly knew anymore what he had actually told them. But they had listened to him. That had been the most important thing.

There was one woman in particular who stood out in his mind. He had exchanged a few words with her right before he left. She had said her name was Solveig Gabrielsson. Wallander had trouble getting her out of his head.

When he got home, he wrote down her name. He didn’t know exactly why.

The phone rang before he’d even taken his coat off. He answered it.

It was Martinsson.

“How did the lecture go?” he asked.

“Good, I think. But that can’t be why you’re calling.”

“I’m just here working,” Martinsson said slowly. “There’s this phone call from the coroner’s office in Lund that I don’t quite know what to do with.”

Wallander caught his breath.

“Do you remember Tynnes Falk?” Martinsson asked.

“The man by the automatic teller. Yes, of course I do.”

“Well, it seems as if his body has disappeared.”

Wallander frowned.

“I thought dead bodies only disappeared into coffins.”

“One would think so, but it appears in this case that someone has actually stolen the corpse.”

Wallander didn’t know what to ask next. He tried to think.

“There’s one other thing,” Martinsson said. “It’s not just that the body has gone missing. Something was left in its place on the stretcher in the morgue.”

“What was that?”

“A broken relay.”

Wallander wasn’t exactly sure what that was, other than that it had something to do with electricity.

“It’s not just an ordinary relay,” Martinsson continued. “It’s large.”

Wallander’s heart was beating faster. He sensed what was coming.

“And where does one normally find large relays?” he asked.

“In power substations, just like the one where Sonja’s body was found.”

Wallander was silent.

They had finally found a connection.

But not the kind he had been expecting.

Chapter Twelve

Martinsson was waiting in the lunchroom.

It was ten o’clock on Thursday evening. The faint sound of a radio came from the control room that handled all the incoming emergency calls. Otherwise, it was completely quiet. Martinsson was drinking a cup of tea and eating some rusks. Wallander sat down across from him without taking off his coat.

“How did your lecture go?”

“You’ve already asked me that.”

“I used to enjoy public speaking, but I don’t know if I’d be any good at it anymore.”

“I’m sure you’d still be better at it than me. But since you’re asking, I can tell you that I had nineteen middle-aged women listening with bated breath to bloodthirsty stories about our socially responsible profession. They were very nice and asked me polite and friendly questions that I answered in a manner that even the National Chief of Police would not have been able to fault. Does that give you the picture?”

Martinsson nodded and brushed the crumbs from his mouth before pulling out his notes.

“I’ll take it from the top. At nine minutes to nine the phone rings in the control room. The officer in charge puts the call through to me, since he knows it doesn’t involve sending out any patrol cars. If I hadn’t been here, the caller would probably have been told to call back tomorrow morning. The caller’s name was Palsson. Sture Pålsson. I don’t know what his position was, but he’s in charge of the coroner’s office in Lund. Anyway, at around eight o‘clock he checked the morgue and noticed that one of the lockers — do they call them lockers? — wasn’t fully closed, and when he pulled out the stretcher, the body was gone and an electrical relay was in its place. He called home to the janitor who had been working there that day. His name was Lyth. He was able to confirm that the body had been there at six o’clock when he left for the day. The body seems to have disappeared sometime between six and eight. On one side of the morgue there’s a back entrance that opens onto the yard. When Pålsson checked the door, he saw that the lock had been broken. He immediately called the Malmö police. The whole thing went very fast. A patrol car was there within fifteen minutes. When they heard that the body in question was from Ystad and had been the subject of a criminal investigation, they told Pålsson to contact us, which he did.”

Martinsson put his notes down.

“The task of finding the body falls primarily to our colleagues in Malmö,” he continued. “But I guess it’s also something that we have to deal with.”

Wallander turned the matter over in his mind. It was a strange and unpleasant incident. He felt his sense of anxiety grow stronger.

“We’ll have to assume that our colleagues will think of searching for fingerprints,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what category this kind of crime falls into. Desecration of the dead? But there is a good chance they won’t take it as seriously as we would like. Did Nyberg manage to secure any fingerprints from the substation?”

Martinsson thought about it.

“I think so. Would you like me to call him?”

“Not right now. But I’d like our Malmö colleagues to look for fingerprints on the relay and around the morgue. ”

“Right now?”

“I think that would be best.”

Martinsson left to go make the phone call. Wallander poured himself a cup of coffee and tried to understand exactly what this meant. A connection had emerged, but it was not one he would have expected and it could still turn out to be an unlikely coincidence. He had experienced such things before. But something told him it wouldn’t be the case here. Someone had broken into a morgue and stolen a dead body, leaving an electrical relay in its place. It made Wallander think of something Rydberg had said many years ago, when they first started working together: “Criminals often leave a greeting at the scene of the crime. Sometimes it’s deliberate, sometimes by accident.”

This is no mistake, Wallander thought. No one just happens to be carrying a big electrical relay around. It’s even less Likely that someone would accidentally leave it on a gurney in a morgue. It was supposed to be found, and it was hardly a message meant for the pathologists. It was left for us.

This led to the other question: Why had the body been stolen? He had heard of cases where the bodies of people who had been members of strange sects were removed. That hardly applied in the case of Tynnes Falk, although it couldn’t be entirely ruled out. But there was really only one wholly plausible explanation: the body had been removed in order to conceal something.

Martinsson returned.

“We’re in luck,” he said. “They’ve put the relay in a plastic bag.”

“Any prints?”

“They’re working on it right now.”

“No signs of the body?”

“No.”

“No witnesses?”

“Not as far as I know.”

Wallander told him what he had been thinking. Martinsson agreed with his conclusions. The relay was a deliberate message, and the body had been removed in order to conceal something from them. Wallander also told him about Enander’s visit and the phone call from Falk’s ex-wife.

“I didn’t put too much stock in what they told me,” he conceded.

“You have to be able to trust the coroner’s report.”

“Just because the body’s been stolen doesn’t mean Tynnes Falk was murdered.”

Martinsson was right.

“I still have trouble seeing any other reason to remove the body except to conceal the manner of death,” he said.

“What do we do now?”

“We need to determine who Tynnes Falk was,” Wallander said.

“Since we closed the case so quickly, we had no need to examine his life closely. But when I talked to the ex-wife she said that Falk was nervous and that he claimed to have many enemies. In fact, she said a number of things that led me to believe he was a complicated person.”

Martinsson made a face.

“A computer consultant with enemies?”

“That was what she said. And none of us has spoken to her in any detail.”

Martinsson was carrying the file folder that contained all the information they had on the Falk case.

“We never talked to his kids,” he said, checking the report. “We never talked to anyone, since we concluded he had died of natural causes.”

“That’s what we’re still assuming,” Wallander said. “It’s as plausible at this stage as anything else. What we have to acknowledge, however, is that there is some kind of connection between him and Sonja Hokberg. Perhaps even to Eva Persson.”

“Why not also with Lundberg?”

“You’re right. Maybe also with the taxi driver.”

“At least we know that Tynnes Falk was already dead when Sonja Hökberg was killed,” Martinsson said. “He’s not our man.”

“And if we assume Falk was murdered, the killer may be the same person who killed Hökberg.”

Wallander’s sense of anxiety increased. They were delving into something they didn’t understand. We have to find the part where it comes together, he thought. We have to go deeper.

Martinsson yawned. Wallander knew he was often asleep by this time.

“The question is whether we can really get much further,” he said.

“We’re not in a position to send people out to look for a lost body.”

“We should take a look at his apartment,” Martinsson said, stifling a new yawn. “He lived alone. We can start there and then talk to the wife.”

“Ex-wife. He was divorced.”

Martinsson got up.

“I have to get some sleep. How’s the car?”

“It’ll be ready tomorrow.”

“Do you want a ride?”

“No, I’m going to stay for a while.”

Martinsson hesitated.

“I know it must have upset you,” he said. “The whole business with the picture in the paper.”

Wallander looked at him closely.

“What’s your take?”

“On what?”

“Whether or not I’m guilty?”

“Clearly you slapped her. But I believe you. She was attacking her mother and you were trying to restrain her.”

“Well, my mind’s made up,” Wallander said. “If they try to pin it on me, I’m quitting.”

He was surprised by his own words. It had never occurred to him before to quit if the internal investigation came back with a guilty verdict.

“In that case, we’ll be swapping roles,” Martinsson said.

“How do you mean?”

“Then I’ll be the one trying to convince you to stay.”

“You’ll never do it.”

Martinsson didn’t reply. He took the folder and left. Wallander stayed at the table. After a little while, two patrol officers on the night shift walked through the room. They nodded at him. Wallander listened absently to their conversation. One of them was thinking of buying a motorcycle in the spring.

Once they had poured themselves coffee and left, Wallander was alone again. Without being completely aware of it, he had already arrived at a decision.

He looked down at his watch. It was almost half past eleven. He knew he should wait until the morning, but the sense of urgency was too great.

He left the station shortly before midnight, a set of pass keys in his pocket.

It took him ten minutes to walk to Apelbergsgatan. There was a soft breeze, and it was a few degrees above freezing. It was overcast. The town felt deserted. Some heavily laden trucks barrelled past him on their way to the Polish ferries. It occurred to Wallander that it was about this time of night that Falk had died.

Wallander stood in the shadows and looked at the apartment building at 10 Apelbergsgatan. The top floor was dark. That was where Falk had lived. The apartment below was also dark, but in the first-floor apartment the lights were on. Wallander shivered. That was where he had once fallen asleep in the arms of a total stranger. He had been so drunk he hadn’t even known where he was.

He fingered the pass keys in his pocket and hesitated. What he was about to do was unnecessary as well as unlawful. There was no reason not to wait until the morning, when he could arrange to get the keys to the apartment. But his sense of urgency wouldn’t let up. And it was something he had learned to trust over the years.

The front door to the building was unlocked. The stairway was dark. He turned on the flashlight he had remembered to bring with him and listened for any sounds before starting up the stairs. There were two doors on the top floor. The one to the right was Falk’s. He listened again, putting his ear up against both doors. Nothing. Then he gripped the little flashlight between his teeth and got out the passkeys. If Falk had outfitted his door with specialty locks, he would have been forced to give up at the outset. But Falk had only ordinary locks. That doesn’t fit with what she said, he thought. That Falk was worried and had many enemies. She must have exaggerated.

It took him longer than he’d expected to get the door open. The pass keys felt unfamiliar in his hands and he had started to sweat. When the door finally opened, he thought he heard breathing coming at him from out of the darkness. But then it was gone. He stepped into the hall and shut the door softly behind him.

The first thing he always noticed about an apartment was the smell. But here there wasn’t one, as if the apartment was new and no one had moved in yet. He made a mental note of it and started to walk through the apartment with the flashlight in his hand, expecting to find someone in there at any moment. Only when he had assured himself that he was alone did he take off his shoes, shut all the curtains, and turn on a lamp.

Wallander was in the bedroom when the phone rang. He flinched and held his breath. The answering machine in the living room picked up and he hurried over to it. But the caller didn’t leave a message. Who had called? Who called a dead person in the middle of the night?

Wallander walked over to one of the windows that looked out onto the street. He peeked out through a tiny slit in the curtains. The street was empty. He tried to penetrate the shadows with his gaze, but he didn’t see anyone.

He started his search in the living room after turning on the desk lamp. Then he stood in the middle of the room and looked around. This is where Tynnes Falk lived, he thought. His story starts with a clean and well-ordered living room that is the very opposite of everyday chaos. There is leather furniture, a collection of maritime art on the walls. There’s a big bookcase along one wall.

He walked over to the desk. He saw an old brass compass laid out next to a green writing pad. Some pens lay neatly lined up next to an antique oil lamp made of clay.

Wallander continued out into the kitchen. There was a coffee cup on the counter and a small notepad on the kitchen table. Wallander turned on the light and looked at the pad. DOOR TO BALCONY, he read. Maybe Tynnes Falk and I have a lot in common, he thought. We both keep notepads in our kitchens. He walked back out into the living room and tried to open the balcony door. It was stiff. Falk hadn’t gotten around to fixing it. He continued into the bedroom. The double bed was made. Wallander knelt and looked underneath it. He saw a pair of slippers.

He opened the closet and pulled out all the dresser drawers. Everything he saw had been neatly arranged. He walked back out into the living room. Slipped in underneath the answering machine were its instructions. When he was sure he could listen to the messages without erasing anything, he put on a pair of rubber gloves and pressed the button.

First there was a message from someone called Jan who asked Tynnes Falk how he was doing. He sounded young — maybe a teenager. He didn’t say when he was calling. Then there were two calls from someone who only breathed on the other end. Wallander had the feeling it was the same person both times. The fourth call came from a tailor’s shop in Malmö to let Falk know his pants were ready. Wallander made a note of the name. Then came the most recent call from the person who only breathed. Wallander listened to the whole thing one more time and wondered if Nyberg could somehow determine if the mystery calls were from the same person.

He put the instruction manual back in its place. There were three photographs on the desk, two of them probably of Falk’s children. There were a boy and a girl. The boy was sitting on a rock in a tropical setting, smiling at the camera. He was probably around eighteen years old. Wallander turned it over. Jan 1996, the Amazon. That must have been the boy who’d left the message on the answering machine. The girl was a little younger. She sat on a bench surrounded by pigeons. Wallander turned that picture over and read Ina, Venice, 1995. The third photograph was of a group of men in front of a white stone wall. It was slightly out of focus. Wallander turned it over but found nothing written on it. He studied the men’s faces. They were of varying ages. To the far left there was a man who looked Asian. Could he be the man from the restaurant? Wallander put the photograph down and tried to think. He tucked the photo into his pocket.

Then he lifted the green writing pad and found a newspaper clipping. How to make fish fondue. He went through the drawers, which were characterized by the same meticulous order. He found a thick diary in the third drawer. Wallander opened it to the last entry. On Sunday, the fifth of October, Tynnes Falk had noted that the wind had died down and that it was three degrees Celsius. The sky was clear and he had cleaned the apartment. It had taken him three hours and twenty-five minutes, which was ten minutes faster than the last time.

Wallander frowned. The notes about the housecleaning perplexed him.

Then he read the last line: A short walk in the evening.

Did that mean he had already been on a walk, or was he about to head out?

Wallander glanced at the entry for the previous day:

“Saturday, the fourth of October, 1997. Gusty winds all day. According to the meteorological institute wind speed is 8 to 10 meters per second. Broken cloud formations. The temperature at six A.M. was 7 degrees Celsius. By two o’clock up to 8, but in the evening back down to 5. C-space has been quiet. No messages. C doesn’t answer. Everything calm.”

Wallander read the last lines without understanding what they meant. He flipped through the diary and saw that all the entries were similar, giving information about the weather as well as “c-space.” Sometimes all was quiet, sometimes there were messages, but what kind of messages they were Wallander never figured out. Finally he shut the book and put it back.

He thought it was strange that Falk had not written a single name anywhere, not even those of his children.

He wondered if Tynnes Falk had been crazy. The diary entries seemed consistent with those of a manic or confused person.

Wallander got up and walked over to the window again. The street was still empty. It was already past one o’clock.

He made one last search of the desk and found some business material. It seemed that Tynnes Falk was a consultant who helped corporate clients choose and install the right computer systems for their businesses. Wallander couldn’t tell exactly what that involved, but he noted that a number of prominent companies, including several banks and Sydkraft Power, had been among his clients.

There was nothing really surprising anywhere.

Wallander closed the last drawer.

Tynnes Falk is a person who doesn’t leave any traces, he thought. Everything is impersonal, well-ordered, and impenetrable. I can’t find him.

Somehow Sonja Hökberg’s murder was connected to Tynnes Falk’s death, and to the fact that his body had now disappeared.

There was also possibly a connection to Johan Lundberg.

Wallander took out the photograph that he had slipped in his pocket. Then he put it back. He wanted to make sure no one found out about his late-night visit. In case he later had Falk’s ex-wife let them in, he didn’t want anything to be missing.

Wallander walked around the apartment and turned out all the lights, then opened all the curtains. He listened carefully for sounds before opening the door. He checked the outside of the door, but the pass keys hadn’t left any marks.

Once he was back out on the street, he paused and looked around. No one was in sight, the town was quiet. He started walking home. It was twenty-five minutes past one o’clock.

He never saw the shadow quietly following him at a distance.

Chapter Thirteen

Wallander woke up when the phone rang.

He sprang out of bed as if he had been lying in wait for the call rather than deeply asleep. As he put the receiver to his ear, he glanced at the time. A quarter past five.

“Kurt Wallander?”

The voice on the other end was unfamiliar to him.

“Speaking.”

“I’m sorry for calling so early. I would like to ask you some questions regarding that alleged assault.”

Wallander was suddenly completely alert. He sat up. The man told him his name and the name of the paper he worked for. Wallander realized he should have foreseen the possibility that a reporter would try to get hold of him early in the morning. If one of his colleagues had wanted to reach him, they would have tried the cell phone. At least that number was still private.

But it was too late now. He had to say something.

“I’ve already explained that it wasn’t assault.”

“So do you mean that the photograph is a lie?”

“It doesn’t tell the whole truth.”

“Would you care to tell it now?”

“Not as long as I’m involved in the investigation.”

“But you must be able to say something?”

“I already have. It wasn’t assault.”

Wallander hung up and unplugged the phone. He could already see the headlines: Defensive silence from police. Officer hangs up on reporter. He sank back onto the pillows. The streetlamp outside his window was swaying in the wind. The light flickered across the wall.

He had been dreaming something when the phone rang. The images slowly returned from his subconscious.

They were images from last fall, when he had taken a trip to the Östergötland archipelago. He had been invited to stay with the postman who delivered mail out in the islands. They had met during one of the worst cases Wallander had ever been involved in. He had accepted the invitation somewhat hesitantly. One early morning, the postman took him to explore one of the remote little islands on the edge of the archipelago, where craggy rocks poked out of the sea like fossilized creatures from the ice age. As he had wandered around the small island on his own, he had experienced a remarkable feeling of clarity. He had often returned to this moment in his thoughts since that time. He had often longed to experience the feeling again.

The dream is trying to tell me something, he thought. I just don’t know what.

He stayed in bed until a quarter to six, when he got up and plugged the phone back in. While he drank a cup of coffee he tried to go through everything that had happened in his head, trying to make sense of the new connection drawn between Sonja Hökberg’s death and the man whose apartment he had searched the night before.

At seven o’clock he gave up trying to make sense of it and went in to the station. It was colder than he had been expecting. He hadn’t yet become accustomed to the fact that it was fall. He wished he had put on a warmer sweater. As he walked, he felt his left foot getting wet. When he stopped and looked at the shoe, he discovered a tear in the sole. It made him furious. He had to restrain himself from tearing off both of his shoes and continuing in bare feet.

When he came into the reception area, he asked Irene who else was already in. She said that both Martinsson and Hansson had arrived. Wallander asked her to send them in to see him. Then he changed his mind and decided to meet them in one of the conference rooms. He asked her to make sure Höglund joined them when she came in.

Martinsson and Hansson entered the room at the same time.

“How did the lecture go?” Hansson asked.

“Let’s not waste our time on that,” Wallander said irritably, then felt guilty that he had taken his bad mood out on Hansson.

“I’m tired,” he said.

“Who isn’t?” Hansson said.

Höglund opened the door and stepped in.

“That’s some wind,” she said as she took off her jacket.

“It’s fall,” Wallander said. “All right, let’s start. Something happened last night that dramatically alters the investigation.”

He nodded to Martinsson, who told the others about the disappearance of Tynnes Falk’s body.

“At least this is something new,” Hansson said when Martinsson had finished. “I don’t think we’ve ever had a stolen body before. I know there was that rubber raft. But not a dead body.”

Wallander made a face. He remembered the rubber raft that had floated ashore on Mossby beach after it had mysteriously and by stillunclear means disappeared from the police station.

Höglund looked at him.

“So are we to accept a connection between the man who died near the cash machine and Lundberg’s murder? That seems ludicrous.”

“Yes,” Wallander said. “But I don’t think we can avoid working with this assumption for now. I think we should also be prepared for the fact that this will be a difficult case. We thought we were dealing with an unusually brutal but clear-cut case of murder. We then saw this first scenario dissolve when Sonja Hökberg escaped and was later found dead at the power substation. We were aware of the fact that a man had been found dead by a cash machine, but we had already declared that case closed from lack of evidence that any crime had been committed. This conclusion still cannot be ruled out. Then the body disappears, and someone puts an electrical relay in its place.”

Wallander interrupted himself and thought back to the questions he had regarding Sonja’s and Eva’s visit to the restaurant and the identity of the Asian man. Now he saw that they should actually start from a totally different angle.

“Someone breaks into a morgue and steals a dead body. We can’t be sure of the reasons, but it seems probable that someone wants to conceal something. At the same time the relay is left as a kind of message. It wasn’t left by accident. The person who removed the body wanted us to find it.”

“Which can only mean one thing,” Höglund said.

Wallander nodded.

“That someone wants us to see a connection between Sonja Hökberg and Tynnes Falk.”

“Couldn’t it be a red herring?” Hansson objected. “Someone who’s read about how the girl was burned to death?”

“Our colleagues in Malmö have assured me the relay is large and heavy,” Martinsson said. “It’s hardly the kind of thing you carry around with you in a briefcase.”

“We have to proceed step by step,” Wallander said. “Nyberg will examine the relay and determine whether or not it originates from our substation. If it does, then we’re home free.”

“Not necessarily,” Höglund said. “It could still be a symbolic act.”

Wallander shook his head.

“I just don’t get that feeling in this case.”

Martinsson called Nyberg while the others went to get coffee. Wallander told them about the reporter who had woken him up that morning.

“It’ll blow over soon,” Höglund said.

“I hope you’re right, but I’m not so sure.”

They returned to the conference room.

“Listen up,” Wallander said. “We have to get serious with Eva Persson. It doesn’t matter anymore that she’s a juvenile. We’ve got to throw away the kid gloves and start getting some real answers. That will be up to you, Ann-Britt. You know what questions to ask, and you’re not going to give up until she starts telling the truth.”

They continued planning the next stages of the investigation. Wallander suddenly realized he had completely recovered from his cold. His strength was returning. They finished around half past nine. Hansson and Höglund disappeared down the hall to their various tasks. Wallander and Martinsson were going to examine Tynnes Falk’s apartment together. Wallander was tempted to tell him about his visit the night before, but he decided against it. He knew that one of his faults was his tendency not to tell his colleagues about all the steps he took in his detective work. But he had also given up hope a long time ago that he would ever be able to change this aspect of his personality.

While Martinsson was arranging getting keys to the apartment, Wallander went to his office with the newspaper that Hansson had earlier thrown on the table. He flipped through it to see if there was anything about himself. The only thing he found was a small item about a police officer suspected of use of excessive force against a juvenile offender. His name did not appear anywhere, but his sense of outrage returned.

He was about to put the paper aside when his gaze fell on the personal ads. He started reading. There was an ad from a divorced fifty-year-old woman who said she felt lonely now that the kids were grown up. She listed her main interests as travel and classical music. Wallander tried to imagine what she looked like, but he kept seeing the face of a woman named Erika whom he had met a year ago at a roadside café in Västervik. He had thought about her from time to time since then, without being able to say why. Irritably he tossed the paper into the trash. But just before Martinsson came into the room he fished it up, tore out the page with the ad and slipped it into one of his drawers.

“His ex-wife’s meeting us there with the keys,” Martinsson said. “So you want to walk or take the car?”

“The car,” Wallander said. “I have a hole in my shoe.”

Martinsson gave him an amused look.

“What would the National Chief of Police say about that?”

“We’ve already instituted his ideas about community policing,” Wallander answered. “Why not expand the idea to include barefoot policing?”

They left the station in Martinsson’s car.

“How are things with you?” Martinsson asked.

“I’m pissed off,” Wallander said. “You’d think you get used to all this but you don’t. During my years in the force I’ve been accused of almost everything, with the possible exception of being lazy. You’d think you develop a defensive shield, but you don’t. At least not in the way you’d hope.”

“Did you mean what you said yesterday?”

“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 pulled up outside 10 Apelbergsgatan, where a woman was waiting for them.

“That must be Marianne Falk,” Martinsson said. “I guess she 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 notified her.”

They stepped out of the car. 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 had the feeling she was worried. He immediately became more alert.

“Have they found the body yet? 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 walked up the stairs. Wallander felt uncomfortable. Had he left anything behind the night before?

Marianne Falk walked ahead of them. When she came to the top landing, she stopped and pointed to the door. Martinsson was right behind her. Wallander pushed him aside. Then he saw. The door to the apartment was wide open. The locks he had taken so much trouble with the night before, trying not to leave any traces of his visit, had been broken with something like a crowbar. Wallander listened for sounds. Martinsson was right beside him. Neither one of them was carrying a weapon. Wallander hesitated. He signaled them to go down to the apartment below.

“There could be someone in there,” he whispered. “We had better get some backup.”

Martinsson picked up his phone.

“I want you to wait in your car,” Wallander said to Marianne Falk.

“What’s happened?”

“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 apartment.

“I told them not to turn on the sirens,” Martinsson whispered. Wallander nodded.

After eight minutes Hansson came up 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 that was holding the gun shook slightly. Wallander was afraid. He was always afraid when he was about to enter a situation where anything was possible. He established eye contact with Hansson, then pushed the door open and called out into the apartment. There was no answer. He shouted again. When the door behind them opened, he jumped. An older woman looked out. Martinsson forced her back inside. Wallander called out a third time without getting an answer.

Then they went in.

The apartment was empty. But it was not the apartment he had left the night before with an impression of meticulous order. Now all the drawers were pulled out and emptied on the floor. Paintings on the wall hung askew and the record collection lay jumbled 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 went to talk to the neighbors. Wallander stood in the doorway to the living room and looked around. How many times had he stood like this in an apartment where a crime had been committed? He couldn’t say. Without being able to put his finger on it, he knew something was missing. He let his gaze slowly travel through the room. When he was looking at the desk for the second time he realized what it was. He took off his shoes and approached the table.

The photograph was gone, the one of the group of men against the white stone wall. He bent over and looked under the desk. He slowly lifted the pieces of paper that had fallen to the ground. But it was gone.

At the same moment he realized 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 up 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.

He was interrupted in his thoughts by Martinsson.

“The woman next door is a widow by the name of Hakansson. 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 apartment 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 a lot to do as it is.”

“It’s important that it’s done right,” Wallander said. “Not that many people live here, anyway.”

Martinsson disappeared again and Wallander waited. A crime technician turned up after twenty minutes.

“Nyberg is on his way,” he said. “But he was in the process of doing something out at the substation that seemed to be important.”

Wallander nodded.

“Take a look at the answering machine,” he said. “I want you to get everything that you can out of it.”

The officer wrote it down.

“The whole apartment should be videotaped,” Wallander continued. “I want this apartment examined down to every last detail.”

“Are the people who live here away?” the officer asked.

“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 apartment and walked out onto the street. There were no clouds in the sky. Marianne Falk was smoking in her car. When she saw Wallander she got out.

“What’s happened?”

“There’s been a break-in.”

“I wouldn’t have believed someone could have such utter disrespect for the dead.”

“I know you were divorced, but were you familiar with his apartment?”

“We had a good relationship. I visited him here many times.”

“I’m going to ask you to return later today,” Wallander said. “When the forensic team is done I want to you to walk through the apartment with me. You might be able to spot something that’s gone missing.”

“Oh, I doubt that.” Her answer came quickly and unwavering.

“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?”

“Nothing. He just changed.”

“In what way?”

“I didn’t know what he was thinking anymore.”

Wallander looked at her thoughtfully.

“But you may still be able to notice if something’s gone. 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 you think it means. 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 Tynnes’s diary the night before.

“Do you know if your ex-husband kept a diary?”

“I’m sure he didn’t.”

“Did he ever keep one?”

“Never.”

So she’s right about one thing, he thought. She didn’t know what he was up to, at least not that he had a diary.

“Was your ex-husband interested in outer space?”

Her surprise seemed completely genuine.

“Why do you ask that?”

“I was just wondering.”

“When we were young we used to sometimes look up at the stars together, but I can’t remember any other signs of interest after that.”

Wallander switched to a new topic.

“You said before that he had many enemies, and that he seemed worried about something.”

“Yes, he actually said that to me.”

“What else did he say?” Wallander asked.

“That people like him always had enemies.”

“Was that all he said?”

“Yes.”

“‘People like me always have enemies’?” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“What did he mean by that?”

“I’ve already told you that I no longer understood him.”

A car pulled over to 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 nodded. He had no more questions.

When she had climbed into her car and backed out of her parking space, Nyberg came over to him.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

“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 before answering.

“You were right, by the way. Once our colleagues in Malmö brought in that relay it was obvious. The substation workers were able to show us exactly where it used to fit.”

Wallander suppressed his excitement.

“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 Sonja Hökberg and Tynnes Falk was confirmed. But what it meant he didn’t yet know.

He started walking back to the police station. After only a few yards he picked up the pace.

Anxiety drove him on.

Chapter Fourteen

After he returned to the station, Wallander tried to construct a reliable outline of the now-chaotic mix of details. But the various events remained sharply separated in his mind. They collided only to quickly continue on their separate ways.

Shortly before eleven, he went to the bathroom and washed his face in cold water. That was also 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 continued on into the lunchroom to get more coffee. But the coffee 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 police work from officers without reliable 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 finally found it in the bottom drawer together with some shoe cleaner and a couple of frayed gloves.

Then he compiled a list of all the events of the case. He made a timeline in the margin. He was trying to break through the surface of the case to the layer that he knew had to be there that connected all the events.

When he was finished, he felt as if he were looking at an evil and incomprehensible fairy tale. Two girls went out and had some beers. One of the girls was so young that she had no business being served in the first place. Some time during that evening, they traded places. This happened at the same time that an Asian man came into the restaurant and sat down at a nearby table. This man paid with a false 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 attacked the driver. They took his money and left, each going separately to her home. When they were picked up by the police they immediately confessed, sharing the blame and saying their motive was money. The older of the two girls then took advantage of a momentary lapse in security and escaped from the police station. Later her burned corpse was found at the power substation outside Ystad. In all likelihood she was murdered. The substation in turn was an important link in the power distribution grid for southern Sweden. When Sonja Hökberg died, she plunged much of the region of Scania into darkness. After this event, Eva Persson retracted her earlier confession and changed her story.

At the same time as these events, a parallel story was unfolding. There was a possibility that this parenthesis, this minor story, was in fact connected to the very heart of the other occurrence somehow. A divorced computer consultant by the name of Tynnes Falk cleaned his apartment one Sunday and then went for an evening walk. He was later found dead in front of an automatic teller machine nearby. After a preliminary investigation that included a conclusive autopsy report, the police eliminated any suspicions of possible crime and considered the case closed. Later the body was removed from the morgue and an electrical relay from the Ystad substation was left in its place. Falk’s apartment was also robbed in conjunction with these latest events, and at least a diary and a photograph were missing.

At the periphery of all these events, figuring as a face in a group photograph and as a customer in a restaurant, was an Asian man.

Wallander read through everything he had just written. He knew it was too early to draw any conclusions, but while he had been sketching out his summary of the events he had also seen a new connection. If Sonja Hökberg had been murdered, it had to be because someone wanted to make sure she didn’t talk. Tynnes Falk’s body had also been removed in order 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 took a new look at his notes, starting at the beginning.

What happened if he placed the events surrounding the power substation at the center? 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 Sonja Hökberg’s fate and Tynnes Falk to be made perfectly clear. But what did this connection mean?

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

He drank his coffee, absently rocking back and forth in his chair. Then he reached for the page he had ripped out of the newspaper and kept looking through the personal ads. What would I say in an ad? he wondered. Who would be interested in a fifty-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 down the page and started writing.

His first attempt was somewhat disingenuous: Fifty-year-old police officer, divorced, grown daughter, tired of being lonely. Appearance and age don’t matter, but you should enjoy opera and the comforts of home. 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 who will leave me alone when I feel like it. He tore up the paper and started writing again. This time the ad was more truthful: Fifty-year-old police officer, diabetic, divorced, grown 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. ”

Who would respond to something like that? he wondered. Hardly anyone stable.

He turned over the page so he could start afresh, but was almost immediately interrupted by a knock on the door. It was already noon, and Höglund was at the door. He realized too late that the personal section of the newspaper was still lying on the table. He snatched it up and threw it in the trash, but he sensed she had seen what he was doing. It irritated him.

I’m never going to write a personal ad, he thought angrily. The chances are too great that someone like Höglund would answer.

She looked tired.

“I’ve just finished questioning Eva Persson,” she said and sat down heavily.

Wallander pushed all thoughts of personal ads aside.

“How was she?”

“She didn’t change her story. She insists that Sonja both stabbed and hit Lundberg.”

“I asked how she was.”

Hoglund thought about it before answering.

“She was different. She seemed more prepared for the questions.”

“How did you get that impression?”

“She spoke faster. Many of her answers seemed as if she had prepared them in advance. It was only when we got to the questions she wasn’t expecting that she started speaking in that slow, apathetic way. That’s how she protects herself, giving herself time to think. I don’t know how intelligent she is, but she’s clear-headed. She keeps track of her lies. I didn’t catch a single instance of self-contradiction in the two hours that we were at it. That’s pretty impressive.”

Wallander pulled over his notepad.

“We’ll take the most important stuff now, your impressions. The rest I’ll read about in your report.”

“It’s totally apparent to me that she’s lying. Quite honestly I don’t understand how a fourteen-year-old girl can be so hard-boiled.”

“Because she’s a girl?”

“I think it would be unusual even for a boy her age.”

“You didn’t managed to budge her?”

“No, not really. She sticks to her new story that she was innocent and claims she only said what she said because she was afraid of Sonja. I tried to get her to tell me why she was afraid, but she wouldn’t. All she said was that Sonja could be very tough on you.”

“She’s probably right about that.”

Höglund checked her notes.

“She denied taking any calls from Sonja, or anyone else, after Sonja’s escape from the station.”

“When did she find out Sonja was dead?”

“Erik Hökberg called her mother.”

“Did Sonja’s death come as a shock?”

“She claims it did, but I certainly couldn’t tell. Maybe she was surprised. She had no explanation as to why Sonja would have gone out to the substation, nor as to who could have taken her there.”

Wallander got up and walked over to the window.

“Did she really have no reaction? No sorrow, no evidence of pain?”

“In my opinion she was controlled and totally cold. Many of her answers were prepared in advance, some pure lies. But I did get the impression that she wasn’t surprised about what had happened, even though she claims she was.”

Wallander was struck by a thought that seemed important.

“Did she seem afraid of anything happening to her?”

“No, I thought about that. I don’t think what happened to Sonja made her worried for her own life.”

Wallander returned to the desk.

“Let’s assume that’s the case. What does that mean?”

“It means Eva Persson is at least partially telling the truth. Not about Lundberg’s murder, since I’m convinced she was an active participant. But I don’t think she had much of an idea what else Sonja was involved in.”

“And what would that be?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why did they switch seats in the restaurant?”

“Because Sonja complained of a cold draft. She won’t change her line on that.”

“And the man who was sitting behind them?”

“She claims not to have seen him or anyone else. She also says she didn’t notice Sonja having contact with anyone other than her.”

“She didn’t see anyone as they were leaving the restaurant?”

“No. That may even be true. I don’t think she could ever qualify for the title of The World’s Most Observant Person.”

“Did you ask her if she had ever heard of Tynnes Falk?”

“She claimed never to have heard the name.”

“Was she telling the truth?”

Höglund paused.

“There might have been a slight hesitation on her part, but I can’t say for sure.”

I should have talked to her myself, Wallander thought helplessly. If Eva Persson had been holding something back, I would have seen it.

Höglund seemed to be reading his thoughts.

“I don’t have your certainty about these things. I wish I could give you a better answer.”

“We’ll get to the bottom of all this sooner or later. If the main entrance is closed, you try the back door.”

“I’ve been trying to make sense of it,” Höglund said. “But nothing hangs together.”

“It will take time,” Wallander said. “I just wonder if we need reinforcements. We just don’t have the manpower we need, even if we shelve our other duties and concentrate on this case.”

Höglund looked at him with surprise.

“I never thought I’d hear you say that. Normally you always insist on us carrying out the investigation alone.”

“Maybe I’ve changed my mind. I just want to make sure we’re able to carry out the footwork necessary in this investigation. I’ll talk to Lisa about it. If she hasn’t already suspended me, that is.”

“You know that Eva Persson is still sticking to that story as well. That you hit her without any provocation.”

“Of course she is. If she’s lying about everything else she might as well lie about that, too.”

Wallander got up. He told her briefly about the break-in at Tynnes Falk’s apartment.

“Has the body been found yet?”

“Not as far as I know.”

Höglund was still sitting.

“Do you understand any of this?”

“No,” Wallander said, “It worries me. Don’t forget that a large area of Scania was left without power.”

They walked out into the hallway together. Hansson looked out of his room to say that the police in Växjö had located Eva Persson’s father.

“According to their report, he lives in a run-down shack somewhere between Växjö and Vislanda. Now they’re wondering what it is we want to know.”

“Nothing for now,” Wallander said. “We have other more important questions to cover.”

They decided to meet at half past one, when Martinsson would have returned. Wallander went back to his room and called the mechanic. His car was ready. He left the police station and walked down Frihemsgatan toward Surbrunn square. A gusty wind came and went.

The mechanic’s name was Holmlund, and he had worked on many of Wallander’s cars over the years. He loved motorcycles, had a number of missing teeth, and spoke with such a strong Scanian accent that Wallander had trouble understanding him. His appearance hadn’t changed a bit since Wallander had first met him. Wallander still couldn’t tell if he was fifty or sixty.

“It’s going to cost you,” Holmlund said and smiled his toothless smile. “But you’ll recoup some of the cost if you sell the car as soon as possible.”

Wallander drove away. The noise from the engine was gone. The thought of getting a new car excited him. The only question was if he was going to stay with a Peugeot or try a new brand. He decided to ask Hansson, who knew as much about cars as he did about horseracing.

Wallander drove down to a fast-food kiosk down by Österleden and ate. He tried to read a newspaper but couldn’t concentrate on it. His thoughts kept returning to the case. He had been trying to find a new focal point and had considered the blackout as a potential candidate. Then they weren’t only looking at a murder but a highly calculated form of sabotage. But what if he tried to form a center around something else, like the man who had appeared at the restaurant? He had made Sonja Hökberg trade places. He had a forged identity. And now he might have turned up in a photograph in Tynnes Falk’s apartment — a photograph that had since been stolen. Wallander cursed himself for not taking the photograph himself as he had been intending to. Then he could have asked Istvan to identify the man.

Wallander put down his fork and called Nyberg’s cell phone. He was about to hang up when Nyberg answered.

“Have you by any chance come across a group photo?” he asked. “Something with a large group of men?”

“I’ll ask.”

Wallander waited and picked at the essentially tasteless piece of fried fish in front of him.

Nyberg returned to the phone.

“We have a photo of three men holding up a number of salmon for the camera. A fishing trip in Norway from 1983.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes. How would you know that he would have a photograph like that, anyway?”

He’s not stupid, Wallander thought. Luckily he had prepared an answer ahead of time.

“I didn’t know. I’m trying to find as many pictures as I can of Falk’s aquaintances.”

“We’re almost done here,” Nyberg said.

“Found anything interesting?”

“It seems to be a standard case of breaking-and-entering. Possibly a drug addict.”

“No clues?”

“We have some fingerprints but they could all belong to Falk. I’m not sure how we’re going to verify that, now that the body is gone.”

“We’ll find him sooner or later.”

“I doubt it. When someone steals a body it’s normally in order to bury it.”

Nyberg was right. Wallander had an idea but Nyberg got there first.

“I asked Martinsson to look up Falk in the police files. We couldn’t rule out the possibility that we already had something on him.”

“And what did he find?”

“He was there, actually. But not his fingerprints.”

“What had he done?”

“According to Martinsson, Falk had been sued and fined for property damage.”

“In connection with what?”

“You’ll have to get the details from Martinsson,” Nyberg said irritably.

They finished the conversation. It was ten minutes past one. Wallander filled up the car and returned to the station. Martinsson walked in at the same time.

“None of the neighbors seemed to have heard or seen anything unusual,” Martinsson said as they walked across the parking lot together. “I managed to talk to all of them. Many are retired and home most of the day. One of them was a physical therapist about your age.”

Wallander had no comments to make. Instead, he brought up what Nyberg had said.

“What was all that business about Falk inflicting property damage?”

“I have the paperwork in my office. It was something about a mink farm.”

Wallander looked at him with curiosity but didn’t say anything. He read the report in Martinsson’s office. Tynnes Falk had been arrested by the police in 1991, slightly north of Sölvesborg. One night, a mink farmer had discovered that someone was opening the cages. He had called the police and two patrol cars had been dispatched. Tynnes Falk had not been working alone, but he was the only one who was caught. He had immediately confessed and given as his motivation the fact that he was vehemently opposed to animals being slaughtered for fur. He had, however, denied acting on behalf of any organization and had never given the names of his accomplices.

Wallander put down the report.

“I thought only young people did things like this,” he said. “Falk was over forty in 1991.”

“I suppose we could be more sympathetic to their cause,” Martinsson said. “My daughter is a Greenpeace supporter.”

“There’s a difference between wanting to protect the environment and taking away a mink farmer’s livelihood.”

“These organizations teach you to have an enormous respect for animal life.”

Wallander didn’t want to be dragged into a debate he felt he would eventually lose. But he was perplexed by Tynnes Falk’s involvement in animal-rights activism.

Wallander returned to his office and called Marianne Falk. An answering machine picked up, but as he started to leave his message her voice came on the line. They agreed to meet in the apartment on Apelbergsgatan around three o’clock. Wallander arrived in plenty of time. Nyberg and his forensic team had already left. A patrol car was parked outside. As Wallander was walking up the stairs to the apartment, the door to the apartment below, the one he would rather have forgotten about, suddenly opened. The door was opened by a woman who looked familiar, but he wasn’t sure.

“I saw you when I looked out the window,” she said, smiling. “I just wanted to say hello. If you even remember me, that is.”

“Of course I do,” Wallander said.

“You know, you never got in touch with me like you promised.”

Wallander couldn’t remember making any promises but he knew it was possible. When he was drunk and strongly attracted to a woman, he was capable of promising almost anything.

“Things came up,” he said. “You know how it is.”

“I do?”

Wallander mumbled something.

“Do you want to come in for a cup of coffee?”

“As you may have heard, there’s been a break-in upstairs. I don’t have time right now.”

She pointed to her door.

“I had a security door put in several years ago. Almost all of us did. Everyone except Falk.”

“Did you know him?”

“He kept to himself. We said hello if we met on the stairs. But that was it.”

Wallander suspected she wasn’t telling the truth but decided not to ask anything else. The only thing he wanted was to get away.

“I’ll have to take a rain check on that coffee,” he said.

“We’ll see,” she said.

The door closed. Wallander was sweating. He rushed up the last flight of stairs. At least she had pointed out a significant fact. Most people in the building had put in security doors, but not Tynnes Falk, the man whom his wife said was anxious and sure he was surrounded by enemies.

The door had not been repaired yet. Wallander walked into the apartment and saw that Nyberg and his team had left the chaos intact.

He walked into the kitchen and sat down by the table. It was very quiet in the apartment. He looked down at his watch. It was ten to three. He thought he could hear footsteps on the stairs. Tynnes Falk was probably too cheap to have it put in, he thought. Security doors cost somewhere between ten and fifteen thousand crowns. Or maybe Marianne Falk is wrong. There were no enemies. But Wallander was doubtful. He thought about the mysterious notations in the diary. There was also the facts that Tynnes Falk’s body had been stolen from the morgue and that someone had broken into his apartment and stolen at least the diary and a photograph.

That could only mean one thing. Someone didn’t want the picture or the diary to be studied too closely.

Wallander cursed himself once again for not removing the picture when he had had the chance.

He heard footsteps on the stairs outside the apartment. That had to be Marianne Falk. The door to the apartment softly opened and Wallander got up to greet her. He left the kitchen and stepped into the hall.

He sensed the danger instinctively and pulled back.

But it was too late.

A violent explosion ricocheted through the apartment.

Chapter Fifteen

Wallander threw himself to one side.

It was only later that he realized his quick reflexes had saved his life, after Nyberg and the forensic team had extracted the bullet in the wall next to the front door. In the subsequent reconstruction of events, and above all from examining the entry hole in Wallander’s jacket, they were able to determine what had happened. Wallander had walked into the hall to greet Marianne Falk. He had turned toward the front door only to sense that something behind it constituted a threat — that the person behind the door was not Marianne Falk. Wallander had jerked backward and tripped on the rug in the hallway. That had been enough to let the bullet aimed at his chest pass between his body and his left arm. It had torn through his jacket, leaving a small but distinct hole.

That evening he got out the measuring tape and measured the distance from his shirt sleeve to where he thought his heart was. Seven centimeters. The conclusion he came to, as he was pouring himself a glass of whiskey, was that the rug had saved his life. It reminded him of the time long ago when he had been stabbed. He had been a young officer in Malmö. The blade had penetrated his chest within eight centimeters of his heart. At the time he had created a kind of mantra for himself. There is a time for living, a time for dying. Now he was struck by the worrying fact that his margin of survival during the past thirty years had decreased by exactly one centimeter.

He still didn’t know exactly what had happened or who had fired the shot. Wallander had not been able to catch a glimpse of more than a shadow behind that door — a rapidly moving figure that seemed to dissipate the moment the shot ricocheted through the apartment and he found himself on the floor of the closet among Tynnes Falk’s coats.

He thought he had been hit. He thought the cry that he heard as the deafening roar of the shot was still echoing in his ears must be his own. But it had come from Marianne Falk, who had been knocked down on the stairs by the fleeing shadow. She had not managed to get a good look at him either. She had heard the shot but thought that it came from below. Therefore she stopped and turned around. Then when she heard someone approach from behind, she turned back, but as she was turning she was hit in the face and tumbled over backwards.

Perhaps most remarkable was the fact that neither of the two officers in the patrol car stationed outside the building saw anything. The assailant must have left the building by the front entrance, since the door to the cellar was locked. But the officers claimed not to have seen anyone leave the building. They had seen Marianne Falk go in, then they had heard the shot without immediately knowing what it was. But they had not seen anyone leave.

Martinsson grudgingly accepted this fact, after having the whole building searched. He forced all the nervous senior citizens and the somewhat more controlled physical therapist to have their apartments scrutinized by policemen, who peeked into every closet and under every bed. There was no trace of the assailant anywhere. If it hadn’t been for the bullet buried in the wall, Wallander would have started to think it had all been his imagination.

But he knew it was real, and he knew something else he didn’t yet want to admit to himself. He knew that the rug had been even more of a blessing than he’d first thought. Not only because it let him escape the bullet, but because his fall had convinced the assailant that he had hit his mark. The bullet that Nyberg extracted from the wall had been the kind that formed a crater-like wound in its victim. When Nyberg showed it to Wallander, the latter instantly understood why the marksman had fired only one shot. He had been convinced that one bullet would have been fatal.

A regional alert had gone out at once, but everyone knew it wouldn’t lead to anything, because no one knew who they were looking for. After all, neither Marianne Falk nor Wallander had been able to give a description of the assailant. Wallander and Martinsson sat down in the kitchen while Nyberg’s team worked on the bullet. Wallander had handed over his jacket to them as well. His ears still hurt from the loud explosion. Lisa Holgersson arrived with Höglund, and Wallander had to explain all over again what had happened.

“The question is why he fired,” Martinsson said. “There’s already been a break-in here. Now an armed assailant returns.”

“We can perhaps speculate that it was the same person,” Wallander said. “But why did he return? I can’t see any other explanation than that he’s looking for something — something he didn’t manage to get the first time he was here.”

“Aren’t we forgetting something else?” Höglund asked. “Who was he trying to kill?”

Wallander had asked himself the same question from the very beginning. Did this have anything to do with the night he’d come here to search the apartment? Had it been a mistake to look out of the window? Had someone been out there watching him? He knew he should tell them about it, but something kept him from doing so.

“Why would anyone want to shoot me?” Wallander asked. “I think it was just plain bad luck that I was here when he returned. What we should ask ourselves is what he came back for, which in turn means that Marianne Falk should be brought back here as soon as possible.”

Marianne Falk had gone home to change her clothes.

Martinsson left the apartment with Holgersson. The forensic team was finishing up. Hoglund stayed in the kitchen with Wallander. Marianne Falk called to say she was on her way.

“How does it feel?” Hoglund asked.

“Not too good. You know what it’s like.”

A couple of years ago Hoglund had been shot down on a field outside of Ystad. That had partly been Wallander’s fault, since he had commanded her to advance without realizing that the suspect had picked up a gun Hansson had dropped a little earlier. Höglund had been seriously injured and it had taken her a long time to recover. When she returned to her post, she was a changed person. She had told Wallander about the fear that now surfaced in her dreams.

“At least I wasn’t hit,” Wallander said. “I was stabbed once. But so far I’ve never stopped a bullet.”

“You should talk to someone. There are support groups.” Wallander shook his head impatiently.

“No need,” he said. “And I don’t want to keep talking about it now.”

“I don’t understand why you always have to be so bullheaded about these things. You’re a good police officer, but you’re only human like the rest of us. You can think what you like. But you’re wrong.”

Wallander was surprised by her eruption. She was right. When he stepped into his role as a policeman, he tended to forget about the person inside.

“I think at the very least you should go home.”

“What good would that do?”

At the same moment, Marianne Falk returned to the apartment. Wallander saw an opportunity to get rid of Höglund and her annoying questions.

“I’d prefer to talk to her alone,” he said. “Thanks for your help.”

“What help?”

Höglund left. Wallander felt dizzy when he stood up.

“What happened back there?” Marianne Falk asked.

Wallander saw a big bruise starting on the left side of her jaw.

“I arrived shortly before three o’clock. I heard someone at the door. I thought it was you, but that wasn’t the case.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know. Apparently you don’t, either.”

“I never had a chance to get a look at him.”

“But you’re sure it was a man?”

She was surprised by the question and took a moment to answer. “Yes,” she said finally. “It was a man.”

Wallander knew she was right, without being able to prove it.

“Let’s start in the living room,” he said. “I want you to walk around and make a note of everything. Tell me if you think something’s gone. Then go on to the next room. Take your time and feel free to open drawers and look behind curtains.”

“Tynnes would never have allowed that. He was so secretive.”

“We’ll talk later,” Wallander interrupted her. “Start with the living room.

He could see she was trying her utmost to do as he said. He stood in the doorway and looked at her as she walked around the room. The longer he looked at her, the more beautiful she seemed to him. He wondered what kind of a personal ad he would have to write in order to get her to answer. She continued into the bedroom. He watched for signs of hesitation. When they returned to the kitchen, thirty minutes had gone by.

“Did anything seem to be gone?”

“No, nothing that I could see.”

“How well did you know the apartment?”

“We never lived here together. He moved here after the divorce. He called sometimes and we had dinner together. But the kids saw him a lot more than I did.”

Wallander tried to remember the facts that Martinsson had laid out for him when they first discussed Falk’s case.

“Does your daughter live in Paris?”

“Ina is only seventeen years old. She’s working as a nanny at the Danish Embassy. She wants to learn French.”

“What about your son?”

“Jan? He’s a student in Stockholm. He’s nineteen.”

Wallander turned the conversation back to the apartment.

“Do you think you would have noticed something being missing?”

“Only if it had been something I had seen before.”

Wallander nodded, then excused himself. He went into the living room and removed one of the three china roosters sitting on a window ledge. When he came back into the kitchen he asked her to go through the living room one more time.

She discovered that the rooster was missing almost at once. Wallander realized they weren’t going to get any further. She had a good memory, even if she didn’t know what Falk kept in his closets.

They sat down in the kitchen. It was almost five o’clock and the fall darkness was blanketing the city.

“Tell me more about his work,” Wallander said. “I know he was self-employed and worked with computer systems.”

“He was a consultant.”

“So what does that mean?”

She looked at him with surprise.

“Our whole country is run by consultants these days. Soon, even party leaders will be replaced by consultants. Consultants are highly paid executives who fly around to various companies and come up with solutions for their problems. If things go badly, they take the blame. But they’re highly paid for their suffering.”

“And your husband was a consultant who specialized in computer systems?”

“I would appreciate it if you didn’t refer to Tynnes as my husband.”

Her comment made Wallander impatient.

“Can you give me some more details of what he did?”

“He was very good at designing internal computer systems for companies.”

“What does that mean?”

She smiled for the first time.

“I don’t think I can explain it to you if you don’t even have the most basic understanding of how computers work.”

She was right.

“Who were his clients?”

“As far as I know, he did a lot of work for banks.”

“Any particular bank?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who would know?”

“He had an accountant.”

Wallander felt around in his pockets for a piece of paper to write the name on. All he found was the receipt for the work on the car.

“His name is Rolf Stenius and he has an office in Malmö. I don’t know his address or phone number.”

Wallander put his pen down. He had a feeling that he had overlooked something and he tried to catch a hold of the thought. Marianne Falk pulled out a packet of cigarettes.

“Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Not at all.”

She got a saucer from a cupboard and lit up.

“Tynnes would be turning in his grave right now if he knew about this. He hated cigarettes. The whole time we were married he always chased me out onto the street to smoke. I guess this is my chance for revenge.”

Wallander took the opportunity to change the topic of conversation.

“When we talked the first time, you said he had enemies, and that he was anxious.”

“Yes, he gave that impression.”

“It’s possible to see if a person is anxious or not. But you can’t just observe that a person has enemies. He must have said something to you.

She paused before giving her answer. She smoked and looked out the window. It was dark outside.

“It started a couple of years ago,” she said. “I noticed that he was anxious, but also excited. As if he were in a kind of manic state. He started making strange comments. For example, if I were here having coffee with him he could say something like, ‘If people knew what I was doing they would kill me.’ Or, ‘You can never know how close your pursuers are.’”

“He actually said those things?”

“Yes.”

“But he never gave you an explanation?”

“No.”

“Did you ask him what he meant?”

“He would get upset and tell me to be quiet.”

Wallander thought carefully before continuing.

“Let’s talk a little about your two children. Do you think either one of them has experienced these things that you describe? The anxiety or the talk about enemies?”

“I doubt it. They didn’t have that much contact with him. They lived with me, and Tynnes wasn’t always that eager to have them over. I don’t say these things in order to be mean. I think both Jan and Ina would agree with me.”

“He must have had some friends.”

“They were very few. I realized after our wedding that I had married a hermit.”

“Who knew him besides you?”

“I know he used to have regular contact with a woman who was also a computer consultant. Her name is Siv Eriksson. I don’t have her number, but she has an office in Skansgrand, next to Sjömansgatan. They worked on some assignments together.”

Wallander made a note of the name. Marianne Falk put out her cigarette.

“One last question,” Wallander said. “At least for now. A couple of years ago Tynnes was caught by the police as he was letting minks out of their cages on a mink farm. He was later charged and fined for this.”

She looked at him with genuine surprise.

“I’ve never heard a word about that.”

“Does it make sense to you?”

“That he was letting minks out of their cages? Why on earth would he do that?”

“So you don’t know if he was in contact with organizations who specialize in this kind of thing?”

“What kind of organizations would that be?”

“Militant environmental groups. Animal-rights activists.”

“I’m having trouble taking this all in.”

Wallander nodded. He knew she was telling the truth. She got up.

“I’ll need to speak to you again,” Wallander said.

He walked her out. She stopped by the hole in the wall.

“Do you carry a weapon in self-defense?”

“No.”

She shook her head, stretched out her hand and said good-bye.

“One more thing,” Wallander said. “Did Tynnes show any interest in outer space?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Spaceships, astronomy, that kind of thing.”

“You’ve already asked me that, and I’ll give you the same answer. We did look at the night sky together a couple of times when we were young, but Tynnes was not the kind of person who usually lifted his head up just to look at the stars. If he ever did, it was probably just to make sure they were still there. He was pragmatic rather than romantic by nature.”

She turned and went down the stairs. Wallander returned to the apartment and sat down on a chair in the kitchen. That was the same place where he had first had the feeling he was overlooking something. It was Rydberg who had taught him to listen to his inner alarm system. Even in the highly technical and rational world of police work, intuition was of crucial importance.

He sat without moving for a few minutes. Then he finally caught hold of it. Marianne Falk had not been able to find anything that was missing. Could that mean that the man who first broke into the apartment and later fired the shot at Wallander was in fact coming to return something? Wallander shook his head at the idea. He was about to get up when he jumped. Someone was knocking on the door. Wallander’s heart was racing. It was only when the knocking stopped that he realized it could hardly be someone announcing his intention to kill him. He went out into the hall and opened the door. There was an elderly man holding a cane on the landing.

“I’m looking for Mr. Falk,” he said in a stern voice. “I have a complaint.”

“May I ask who you are?” Wallander asked.

“My name is Carl-Anders Setterkvist and I own this building. There have been a number of complaints from the other residents lately about excessive noise and loud visits by military men. I would prefer to speak to Mr. Falk about it personally, if possible.”

“Mr. Falk is dead,” Wallander said brutally.

Setterkvist looked at him with surprise.

“Dead? Whatever do you mean?”

“I’m a police officer,” Wallander said, “Homicide division. There’s been a burglary here. But Tynnes Falk is dead. He died last Monday. There are no military personnel running up and down these stairs, they’re police.”

Setterkvist seemed to be trying to judge if Wallander was telling the truth or not.

“I would like to see your identification badge, please,” he said finally.

“Our badges disappeared a long time ago,” Wallander answered, “but you can see my identification card.”

He took it out of his pocket, and Setterkvist studied it carefully.

Wallander told him briefly what had happened.

“How unfortunate,” Setterkvist said. “What will happen to the apartments?”

Wallander frowned.

“The apartments?”

“I simply mean that it’s difficult when new people move in. One wants to know what kind of people they are before renting out the place, especially in this kind of building with a number of elderly tenants.”

“Do you live here yourself?”

Setterkvist was clearly insulted.

“I live in a house outside of town.”

“You said ‘apartments.’”

“What else would I have said?”

“Do you mean that Falk rented more than one apartment?”

Setterkvist made a gesture indicating that he wanted to be let in to the apartment. Wallander stepped aside.

“I’d just like to remind you that it’s so messy in here because there’s been a burglary.”

“I’ve been the victim of a burglary myself,” Setterkvist answered calmly. “I know how it is.”

Wallander ushered him into the kitchen.

“Mr. Falk was an excellent tenant,” Setterkvist said. “He was never late with the rent. At my age one is never surprised by anything, but I must admit I was a little shaken by the complaints that have come pouring in these past few days. That is why I had to come in person.”

“He rents more than one apartment from you?” Wallander asked again.

“I have a wonderful old building by Runnerström Square,” Setterkvist said. “Falk had a small apartment in the attic there. He said he needed it for his work.”

That would explain the absence of computers, Wallander thought. There certainly isn’t anything in this apartment to suggest he worked here.

“I need to see that office,” Wallander said.

Setterkvist thought for a moment and then pulled out the largest set of keys Wallander had ever seen. But Setterkvist knew exactly which keys he needed. He removed them from the key chain.

“I’ll write out a receipt,” Wallander said.

Setterkvist shook his head.

“One has to be able to trust people,” he said. “Or rather, one has to be able to rely on one’s own judgment.”

Setterkvist marched off, while Wallander called the station and arranged for someone to come out and help him seal the apartment. Then he walked straight down to Runnerström Square. It was close to seven o’clock. The wind was still gusty. Wallander was cold. Martinsson had lent him a spare coat, but it was thin. He thought about the bullet. It still seemed unreal. He wondered what his reaction would be in a couple of days, when the realization of how close to death he had been finally sunk in.

The building at Runnerström Square was a three-story, turn-of-thecentury building. Wallander walked to the other side of the street and stared up at the attic windows. No lights were on. Before he walked to the front door, he looked around. A man cycled past, and then Wallander was alone. He walked across the street and let himself in. He heard music coming from one apartment. He turned on the light in the stairwell. When he had climbed the stairs all the way to the attic floor he found only one apartment door on the landing. It was a security door without a name or mail slot. Wallander listened, but he heard nothing. Then he unlocked the door. He paused in the doorway and listened again. For a split second he thought he heard someone breathing in the darkness and he almost jumped out before he realized it was his imagination. He turned on the light and let the door close behind him.

It was a large room, almost completely empty. The only furniture was a desk and a chair. There was a large computer on the desk. Wallander approached it and saw that there was something resembling a blueprint on the desk next to the computer. He turned on the desk lamp.

It took him a moment to understand what it was.

Then he realized he was looking at a blueprint of the power substation where Sonja Hökberg had been killed.

Chapter Sixteen

Wallander held his breath.

At first he thought he was mistaken. It had to be a blueprint of something else. Then all doubt disappeared. He knew he was right. He carefully lay the paper back on the desk, next to the computer. He could see his own face reflected in its large dark screen. There was a phone on the desk. He thought he should call someone, either Martinsson or Höglund. And Nyberg. But he didn’t lift the receiver. Instead he started walking around the room slowly. This is where Tynnes Falk worked, he thought. Behind a reinforced steel door that would have been very hard for someone to open without a key. This is where he worked as a computer consultant. One evening his body is found next to a cash machine. His body disappears from the morgue, and now I find a blueprint for the power substation next to his computer.

For one breathtaking moment he thought he sensed the connection. But the myriad of facts was too confusing. Wallander kept walking around. What is here? he thought, and what is missing? There is a computer, a chair, a desk, and a lamp. There are a telephone and a blueprint, but no shelves, no binders, no books. There isn’t even a pen.

After making a round he returned to the desk and turned the lampshade so that the beam of light was directed at the wall. He turned it so the light illuminated each wall in turn. The light was strong, but he didn’t see any hiding places. He sat down in the chair. The silence around him was overwhelming. If Martinsson had been here, Wallander would have asked him to turn on the computer. Martinsson would have loved that job. But Wallander didn’t dare touch it himself. Again he thought that he should call him, and again he hesitated. I have to understand how this hangs together, he thought. That’s the most important thing right nozu. Nezu connections have been revealed in a much shorter span of time than I would have thought. The problem is that I can’t see the pattern yet.

It was now almost eight. He finally decided to call Nyberg.

It couldn’t help that it was already evening and Nyberg had been working for the past few days with no sleep. Someone else would probably have decided that the investigation of the apartment could wait until the following day, but Wallander was plagued by a sense of urgency that was only growing stronger. He called Nyberg on his cell phone. Nyberg listened without saying anything. He made a note of the address, and once they ended the conversation, Wallander made his way to street level to wait for him.

Nyberg arrived alone. Wallander helped him carry his bags up.

“What am I looking for here?” Nyberg asked once they were in the apartment.

“Prints. Secret compartments.”

“Then I won’t need anyone else for now. Can we wait on the photography and videotape?”

“Do it in the morning.”

Nyberg nodded and took off his shoes. He took out a pair of custom-made plastic shoes from one of his bags. Nyberg had always been frustrated with the protective shoe covers that were commercially available. A couple of years ago he had finally designed his own and found someone to make them. Wallander assumed he had paid for them out of his own pocket.

“Are you good at computers?” he asked.

“I know as little as the next man about how they actually work,” Nyberg said. “But I can probably get it started for you.”

Wallander shook his head.

“Martinsson would never forgive me if I let anyone else deal with it.”

Then he showed Nyberg the paper lying on the table. Nyberg saw at once what it was. He looked questioningly at Wallander.

“What does this mean? Did Falk kill the girl?”

“He was already dead when she was murdered,” Wallander answered.

Nyberg nodded.

He got a magnifying glass out of his bags and sat down at the table. He studied the blueprint while Wallander waited silently.

“This is not a copy,” Nyberg said finally. “It’s an original.”

“Are you sure?”

“Not completely, but almost.”

“That would mean someone should be missing it.”

“I don’t know if this is right or not,” Nyberg said, “but I talked to that guy Andersson about the security procedures at the power company. It should have been nearly impossible for anyone to make a copy of this blueprint, much less steal it.”

Nyberg had brought up an important point. If the blueprint had been stolen from files at the power company, that could yield more clues.

Nyberg set up his spotlights. Wallander decided to leave him alone. “I’m going into the station. Call me if you need me.”

Nyberg didn’t answer. He was already lost in his work.

Once Wallander was down on the street, he realized his mind was making a slightly different decision. He wasn’t going to go straight down to the station. Marianne Falk had talked about a woman named Siv Eriksson. She should be able to tell him more about Falk’s work as a consultant. She lived nearby, or at least her office was there. Wallander left his car where it was. He took Langgatan toward the center of town, then turned right on Skansgrand. The streets were deserted. He turned around twice, but there was no one behind him. The wind was still strong and he was cold. While he was walking he started thinking about the bullet. He wondered when what had happened was going to hit him for real, and he wondered how he would react.

When he arrived at the building that Marianne Falk had described to him, he saw the sign by the door at once. SERKON. SIV ERIKSSON, CONSULTANT.

The office should be on the second floor. He pushed the buzzer and crossed his fingers. If it were only her office, he would have to find her home address somehow.

But someone picked up almost at once. Wallander announced who he was and what he wanted. The woman who had answered didn’t say anything, but the door unlocked. Wallander went in.

She was waiting for him in the doorway when he came up the stairs. Although the light in the hallway was strong for his eyes, he recognized her at once.

He had met her the evening before when he had given his lecture. He had been introduced to her, but had of course forgotten her name. It flashed through his mind that it was odd that she hadn’t explained who she was. She must have known that Falk was dead.

It threw him for a moment. Was it possible that she still did not know? Was he going to be announcing a death?

“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said.

She let him into the apartment. There was the smell of an open fire coming from somewhere. Now he saw her clearly. She was in her forties, with medium-length dark hair and sharp features. He had been much too nervous when he met her to notice her appearance, but the woman he now saw made him self-conscious, the way he always felt when he saw someone he found attractive.

“I should explain why I’ve come,” he said.

“I already know that Tynnes is dead. Marianne phoned me.”

Wallander noticed that she seemed sad. He felt relieved. He had never been able to get used to the task of notifying someone of a death.

“As colleagues you must have been close,” he said.

“Yes and no,” she said. “We were close, very close. But only when it came to work.”

Wallander wondered briefly if their collegiality had actually extended to more than that, and it made him feel an inexplicable pang of jealousy.

“I assume you must have an important matter to discuss with me, since you’re here after hours,” she said, handing Wallander a hanger.

He followed her into a tastefully arranged living room. There was a fire burning in the open fireplace. Wallander got the feeling that both the furniture and paintings were expensive.

“Can I get you anything?”

Whiskey, Wallander thought. I really need it.

“That won’t be necessary,” he said.

He sat down in a dark-blue sofa while she sat in a chair across from him. She had shapely legs. He became aware of the fact that she had noticed his gaze.

“I came straight from Falk’s office,” Wallander said. “He didn’t seem to have anything except a computer.”

“Tynnes was an ascetic. He wanted everything around him as pared back and minimalist as possible. It helped him work.”

“That’s my real reason for coming down here: to ask you what his work consisted of. What your work consisted of, I should say.”

“We worked together on some things, but not all the time.”

“Then let’s start by talking about what he did when he worked alone.”

Wallander regretted not having called Martinsson. There was a good chance he was going to get answers that he wouldn’t be able to understand.

It still wasn’t too late to call him, but for the third time this evening Wallander decided to let it go.

“I should warn you, I don’t know much about computers,” Wallander said. “You’ll have to be very clear, or I won’t be able to follow you.

She looked at him and smiled.

“That surprises me,” she said. “From your lecture last night I gathered that computers are a police officer’s best friend.”

“That doesn’t apply to me personally. Some of us still have to engage in the old-fashioned business of talking to people, not just running names through various databases. Or sending e-mail messages back and forth.”

She got up and walked over to the hearth, then bent down to adjust the logs. Wallander watched her, but quickly lowered his gaze when she turned around.

“What exactly do you want me to tell you? And why?”

Wallander decided to start with the second question.

“We’re no longer convinced that Falk died of natural causes, even though the autopsy report pointed fairly conclusively to a heart at tack.”

“A heart attack?”

Her surprise seemed genuine. Wallander immediately thought of the doctor who had come to see him.

“There was nothing wrong with his heart. Tynnes was in excellent shape.”

“That’s what I’ve heard. That’s one of the reasons we wanted to reevaluate the case. The question then becomes what else this could be. An attack, perhaps, or simply an accident.”

She shook her head doubtfully.

“Not an attack. Tynnes would never have let anyone get close enough for that.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was always on his guard. He often talked about how he felt vulnerable in public. So he was prepared, and I know he was quick on his feet. He was quite advanced in some martial art that I forget the name of.”

“He could split bricks with his bare hands?”

“Sort of.”

“So you believe it was an accident?”

“Yes, it had to be.”

Wallander nodded silently before continuing.

“There were additional reasons for my visit, but I think we’ll put those aside for now.”

She poured herself a glass of wine and carefully put it down on the armrest.

“I suppose you realize that makes me curious.”

“Unfortunately I can’t share any more information with you.”

That’s a lie, Wallander thought. I could tell her a lot more if I wanted. For some reason I’m enjoying having some power over her, however small.

She interrupted his thoughts.

“What else was it you asked me?”

“About his work.”

“Right. He was a highly accomplished developer of computer systems.”

Wallander waited for more.

“He designed computer programs for various businesses. Sometimes he just customized and improved existing systems. When I say he was highly accomplished, I mean it. He had several offers from important companies both in Asia and North America. But he always declined, even though it would have meant a great deal of money.”

“Why did he do that?”

A look of anxiety flitted across her face.

“I actually don’t know.”

“Did you ever talk about it?”

“He always told me about the offers he received, and the amounts of money they were offering. If it had been me, I would have accepted them on the spot. But not him.”

“And he never told you why?”

“He just didn’t want to. He didn’t think he needed to.”

“He must have had plenty of money.”

“I don’t think that was it. Sometimes he needed to borrow from me.”

Wallander frowned. He sensed they were nearing an important point.

“He didn’t say anything else?”

“No, nothing. He just didn’t need the extra work, he said. If I tried to keep asking, he inevitably cut me off. He could be quite aggressive at times. He set the limits, not me.”

What was the real motivation for saying no? Wallander wondered. It doesn’t make sense.

“What determined the kind of project you would work on together rather than individually?”

Her answer surprised him.

“The degree of tedium involved.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Some parts of our kind of work will always be somewhat tedious. Tynnes could be impatient, and he often parceled out the more mundane tasks to me so that he could turn his full attention to the most challenging and interesting parts of the project. Especially if it involved something on the cutting edge, something that hadn’tbeen addressed before.”

“And you accepted this arrangement?”

“You have to live with your own limitations. It was never as boring for me as for him. I didn’t have his extraordinary talents.”

“How did you first meet?”

“Until the age of thirty I was a housewife. Then I divorced and got an education. Tynnes gave a lecture in one of my classes. I was fascinated by him, and I asked if he had any work for me. At first he said no, but a year later he called me. Our first project was designing a security system for a bank.”

“And what did that involve?”

“Today money is transferred between accounts at an astonishing speed, between private persons and companies, between the banks of various countries, and so on. There are always people out there who want to disrupt these transfers for their own ends. The only way to thwart them is to stay a step ahead. It’s a constant battle.”

“That sounds very difficult.”

“It is.”

“It also sounds like a task that would be too big for a lone computer consultant in Ystad, however gifted.”

“One of the advantages of the new technology is that you can be in the middle of things no matter where you’re located. Tynnes was in constant contact with companies, computer manufacturers, and other programmers all around the world.”

“From his office here in Ystad?”

“Yes.”

Wallander was unsure of how to proceed. He still didn’t feel that he had a good grasp of Falk’s work, but he also saw the futility in continuing this conversation without Martinsson present. They should also get in touch with the IT-division at the national police headquarters.

Wallander decided to change the subject.

“Did he have any enemies?”

He watched her face carefully while he asked the question. But he couldn’t see anything other than surprise.

“Not as far as I know.”

“Did you notice a change in him recently?”

She thought for a while before answering.

“He was the same as always.”

“And how was that?”

“Moody. He always worked a great deal.”

“Where did you two meet to discuss your work?”

“Here. Never in his office.”

“Why not?”

“I think Tynnes was somewhat of a germophobe, to be honest. I think he didn’t want anyone leaving dirt on his floor. He was manic about maintaining cleanliness.”

“Falk seems to have been a very complicated man.”

“Not when you got to know him. He wasn’t so different from other men.”

Wallander looked at her with interest.

“And what are men like, exactly?”

She smiled.

“Is that your personal question, or are we still discussing Tynnes?”

“I’m not here to ask personal questions.”

She sees right through me, Wallander thought.

“Men are often childish and vain, although they deny it.”

“That’s a rather broad characterization.”

“I mean what I say.”

“So Falk was like that?”

“Yes. But not always. He could be very generous, for example. He always paid me more than he had to. But you could never predict his moods.”

“He had once been married and had children.”

“We never talked about his family. It was only after about a year that I even heard he had one.”

“Did he have any outside interests, apart from his work?”

“None that I knew about.”

“Any friends?”

“He had some friends that he corresponded with via e-mail. I never saw him get so much as a postcard through the regular mail.”

“How can you know that if you were never at his office?”

She made a little gesture of applause.

“Good question. His mail came to my address, as it happens. But nothing was ever sent to him.”

“Nothing?”

“Yes, literally nothing. The whole time I’ve known him nothing ever came for him. No letter, no bill. Nothing.”

Wallander frowned.

“This is a bit confusing. He used your address, but no mail ever actually came for him?”

“From time to time he got junk mail, but that was all.”

“He must have had another postal address as well, then.”

“Probably, but I don’t know what it was in that case.”

Wallander thought about Falk’s two apartments. There had been nothing in the office at Runnerström Square, but he couldn’t remember seeing any mail at Apelbergsgatan either.

“We’ll have to look into this,” he said. “Falk makes a secretive impression.”

“I guess some people don’t like getting mail, while others love the sound of another letter coming through the mail slot.”

Wallander had no more questions. Falk was a mystery. I’m proceeding too quickly, he thought. First we have to see what’s in his computer. If he had a life that’s where we’ll find it.

She poured herself more wine and asked him if he had changed his mind. Wallander shook his head.

“You said you were close. Did you ever visit him at home?”

“No.”

That answer came a little too quickly, Wallander thought. Perhaps there had been something between Falk and his female assistant after all.

Wallander saw that it was already nine o’clock. The fire had burned down to glowing coals.

“I take it there’s been no mail for him in the past few days?”

“No, nothing.”

“And how would you sum up everything that’s happened?”

“I don’t know. I thought Tynnes would live to a ripe old age. It must have been an accident.”

“You don’t think he could have had some illness you didn’t know about?”

“Yes, of course that’s possible. But I don’t think so.”

Wallander wondered if he should tell her about the disappearance of Falk’s body. But he decided to wait. He switched tracks.

“There was a blueprint of a power substation on his desk. Do you know anything about that?”

“I hardly even know what one is.”

“It’s a structure just outside Ystad belonging to Sydkraft Power.”

She thought hard.

“He did some work for Sydkraft several years ago,” she said. “But I wasn’t involved.”

Wallander had a thought.

“I’d like you to make a list of all the jobs he had recently,” he said. “Both those he worked on alone and those you worked on together.”

“How far back should I go?”

“Start with this year.”

“Tynnes may have had projects I didn’t know about.”

“I’ll talk to his accountant,” Wallander said. “He must have given him the information. But I’d still like to see your list.”

“Right away?”

“Tomorrow is fine.”

She got up and stirred the embers in the fire. Wallander tried to compose a personal ad in his head that would tempt Siv Eriksson to reply. She returned to her chair.

“Are you hungry?”

“No. I’m on my way out.”

“It doesn’t seem as if my answers have helped you.”

“I know more about Tynnes Falk than I did before I came. Police work requires patience.”

He knew he should get up and leave. He had no more questions. He finally got to his feet.

“I’ll get in touch tomorrow,” he said. “Do you think you could fax the list of clients to the police station?”

“How about an e-mail attachment?”

“That would be fine as well, though I have no idea how to read those or even what address I have.”

“I can find that out.”

She followed him out. Wallander put on his coat.

“Did Falk ever talk to you about mink farming?” he asked.

“Why on earth would he ever have done that?” she asked.

“I was just wondering.”

She opened the front door. Wallander felt a strong urge not to leave.

“You gave a great lecture,” she said. “But you were very nervous.”

“I think that’s par for the course when you’re standing on your own in front of so many women.”

They said good-bye. Wallander walked down the stairs. Just before he opened the door to the street, his cell phone rang. It was Nyberg.

“How fast can you get here?”

“Pretty fast,” Wallander said. “Why do you ask?”

“I think you’d better come over.”

Nyberg hung up. Wallander’s heart beat faster. Nyberg would only have called if it was important.

Something had happened.

Chapter Seventeen

It took Wallander less than five minutes to return to the building at Runnerström Square. When he had walked up all the stairs he saw Nyberg smoking on the landing outside the apartment. That was when Wallander realized how extremely tired Nyberg was. He never smoked unless he was about to collapse from exhaustion. The last time that had happened was a couple of years ago during the difficult homicide investigation that led to the capture of Stefan Fredman.

Nyberg put out the cigarette with his foot and nodded to Wallander to follow him in.

“I started looking at the walls,” Nyberg said. “There was a discrepancy. It happens sometimes in old buildings; renovations end up changing the original floor plan. But I started measuring the room anyway, and found this.”

Nyberg led Wallander to the far end of the room. A part of the wall jutted into the room at a sharp angle.

“I started knocking on the walls,” Nyberg continued. “It sounded hollow. Then I saw this.”

Nyberg pointed to the floor. Wallander crouched down. If you looked closely you could see that the baseboard had been sawed loose from the floor. There was also a thin crack in the wall that had been carefully taped over and painted.

“Have you looked to see what’s behind this wall?”

“I wanted to wait for you.”

Wallander nodded. Nyberg carefully pulled away the tape, revealing a door about one and a half meters high. Then he stepped aside. Wallander pushed open the door, which gave way without a sound. Nyberg shone his flashlight into the opening.

The concealed room was bigger than Wallander had imagined. He wondered if Setterkvist knew about this. He took Nyberg’s flashlight and looked around. He soon found the light switch.

The room was maybe eight square meters, with no windows but a small air vent. It was completely empty except for a table that looked like an altar. There were two candles on it and a photograph on the wall depicting Tynnes Falk. Wallander got the feeling that the picture had been taken in this very room. He asked Nyberg to hold the flashlight while he went closer to study the photograph. Falk was staring straight into the camera. His expression was serious.

“What’s that in his hand?” Nyberg asked.

Wallander took out his glasses and then peered up at the photo again.

“I don’t know what you think,” he said finally straightening out his back. “But it looks to me as if he has a remote control in his hand.”

They switched places. Nyberg came to the same conclusion. It was a remote control.

“Tell me what I’m looking at,” said Wallander. “I’m at a loss.”

“Did he worship himself?” Nyberg asked in a confounded tone of voice. “Was the man a lunatic?”

“I don’t know,” Wallander said.

They turned their attention to the rest of the room, but there was nothing else to look at. Wallander put on a pair of rubber gloves and carefully removed the picture. He looked on the back, but there was no writing. He handed the picture over to Nyberg.

“You’ll have to look it over.”

“Maybe this room is part of a series of rooms,” Nyberg suggested doubtfully. “Like a series of Chinese boxes. Maybe there’s another secret room somewhere.”

They searched the room together but found nothing. The walls were solid.

They returned to the first room.

“You haven’t found anything else?” Wallander asked.

“No. It seems as if the room was cleaned recently.”

“Falk was a clean freak,” Wallander said. He recalled both the diary entries and what Siv Eriksson had told him.

“I don’t think I can do much more tonight,” Nyberg said. “But I’ll come back tomorrow to finish up.”

“We’ll also bring in Martinsson,” Wallander said. “I want to know what’s in that computer.”

Wallander helped Nyberg collect his things.

“How the hell can someone worship himself?” Nyberg asked when they had finished and were ready to leave.

“I can give you countless examples of it,” Wallander said.

“At least I won’t have to deal with this any more in a couple of years,” Nyberg said. “Lunatics who pray to their own image.”

They loaded all the bags into Nyberg’s car. Wallander nodded to him and watched him drive off. The wind had picked up. It was close to ten thirty. He was hungry, but the thought of going home and cooking something was not appealing. He got in the car and drove to a fast-food kiosk that was still open. When his food came, some boys had started playing a noisy video game. He decided to take his hot dogs and mashed potatoes out to the car. With the very first bite he managed to spill something on Martinsson’s coat. His reaction was a desire to open the car door and throw everything on the ground. But he managed to calm himself down.

Once he had finished eating, he wasn’t sure if he should go home or down to the station. He needed to sleep, but his anxiety wasn’t letting up. He drove to the station. There was no one in the lunchroom, but the coffee machine had been fixed. Someone had written an angry note about not pulling too hard on the levers.

What levers? Wallander thought helplessly. I put my cup down and push a button. I’ve never even seen a lever He took his coffee and went back to his office. The hallway was deserted. He had no idea how many late nights he had spent there alone.

Once, when he was still married to Mona and Linda was a young child, Mona had turned up at his office fuming and told him he had to make a choice between his family and his work. That time, he had immediately gone home with her. But there had been many times when he had chosen to stay on and work.

He took Martinsson’s coat with him to the bathroom and tried to clean it, but without success. Then he returned to his office and spent a half-hour making notes about his conversation with Siv Eriksson. When he was done, he yawned and stretched. It was half past eleven and he knew he had to go home and try to sleep, but he forced himself to read through what he had written. He kept thinking about Falk’s strange personality and his secret room with an altar for worshipping his own image. And the fact that no one knew where he had his mail sent. Then he thought about something Siv Eriksson had said that had stuck in his mind.

Tynnes Falk had declined a number of lucrative job offers because he felt he had enough as it was.

Wallander checked the time. Twenty minutes to midnight. He wanted to talk to Marianne Falk to ask about Falk’s will but decided it was too late to call, even though something told him she wasn’t asleep yet.

Wallander yawned. He put on his coat and turned off the light. As he was walking out through the reception area, one of the officers on the night shift stuck his head out of the control room.

“I think I have something for you,” he said.

Wallander shut his eyes tightly and hoped it wasn’t anything that would keep him up all night. Then he walked over and took the receiver that the man held out to him.

“Someone has discovered a body,” the officer said.

Not another one, Wallander thought. We can’t handle it. Not right now.

He held the receiver to his ear.

“Kurt Wallander. What seems to be the matter?”

The man speaking on the other end was clearly agitated. He was screaming into the phone. Wallander held the receiver farther from his ear.

“Please speak more slowly,” Wallander said. “Clearly and slowly. Otherwise we’re not going to be able to get anywhere. What is your name, please?”

“My name is Nils Jönsson. There’s a dead man on the street.”

“Where are you?”

“In Ystad! I tripped over him. He’s naked and he’s dead. It’s horrible! I shouldn’t have to see things like this. I have a weak heart!”

“Calm down,” Wallander said. “Nice and easy, now. You say there’s a naked dead man on the street?

“Isn’t that what I said?”

“Yes, you did. Now tell me what street you’re on.”

“I don’t know. It’s a fucking parking lot!”

Wallander shook his head.

“Is it a street or a parking lot?”

“I guess it’s something in between.”

“And where is it?”

“I’m on my way from Trelleborg to Kristianstad. I was going to fill up the car and then he was just lying there.”

“So you’re calling from a gas station?”

“I’m in my car.”

Wallander had begun to hope the man was simply intoxicated and imagining things. But his agitation seemed real.

“What can you see from your car?”

“I think it’s a department store.”

“Is there a name?”

“I can’t see any. I took the exit.”

“What exit?”

“The one for Ystad, of course!”

“From Trelleborg?”

“From Malmö. I was on the main highway.”

A thought had come crawling out of Wallander’s subconscious, though he had trouble believing it could be true.

“Can you see a cash machine from your car?” he asked.

“That’s where he is. On the sidewalk.”

Wallander held his breath. The man kept talking and Wallander handed the phone to the officer who had been listening in the background.

“It’s the same place Falk was found,” Wallander said. “The question is simply if we’ve found him again.”

“Who do you want me to send down there?”

“Call Martinsson and Nyberg. How many patrol cars are out right now?”

“Two. One is in Hedeskoga checking a domestic dispute. Some birthday party that got out of hand.”

“The other?”

“Downtown.”

“Tell them to head to the parking lot on Missunnavagen as soon as possible. I’ll get there on my own.”

Wallander left the station. He was freezing in the thin coat. During the short car ride he wondered what he was about to see. But deep down he was sure it was Tynnes Falk who had been returned to the place of his death.

Wallander and a patrol car arrived almost simultaneously. A man jumped out of a red Volvo when they arrived. He was waving his arms. Wallander got out and the man approached him shouting and pointing. He had bad breath.

“Wait here,” he ordered.

Then he walked over to the cash machine. It was Tynnes Falk. He was lying on his stomach with his hands tucked underneath his chest. His head was turned to the left. Wallander told the other officers to seal off the area. He also asked them to take down Nils Jonsson’s information, something he didn’t have the energy to do himself. He didn’t expect Jonsson to have anything important to tell them. The person or persons who had returned Falk’s body would most likely have chosen a time when no one could see them.

Wallander had never seen anything like this before. The reconstruction of a death, a body returned to the scene of the killing.

He didn’t understand it. He walked slowly around the body as if he were expecting Falk to rise to his feet.

One could say I’m looking at a divine figure, he thought. You worshipped yourself, Tynnes Falk. According to Siv Eriksson, you were planning to become a very old man. But you didn’t even live as long as I have.

Nyberg arrived in his car. He stared at the body for a full minute, then looked over at Wallander.

“Wasn’t he already dead? Then how did he end up back here? Was this where he wanted to be buried?”

Wallander didn’t know what he should say in response to these questions. He saw Martinsson park behind one of the patrol cars, and he walked over to meet him.

Martinsson got out of his car. He was dressed in a sweatsuit. He eyed the stain on the coat Wallander was wearing with disapproval, but he didn’t say anything.

“What’s happened?”

“Tynnes Falk has come back.”

“Is that your idea of a joke?”

“I’m just telling you what’s happened. Tynnes Falk is lying in the same spot where he died.”

They walked over to the cash machine. Nyberg was talking on the phone to a member of his forensic team. Wallander wondered gloomily if he was going to have to see Nyberg faint again.

“There’s one important thing I want you to check out,” Wallander told him. “See if you think he’s lying in the same position as when he was first found.”

Martinsson nodded and slowly circled the body. Wallander knew he had an excellent memory. Martinsson shook his head.

“He was lying farther away from the machine before. And one leg was bent.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Wallander thought for a moment.

“We really don’t need to wait for a doctor this time,” he said after a while. “Falk was pronounced dead over a week ago. I think we can turn him over without being accused of any wrongdoing.”

Martinsson hesitated, but Wallander insisted. He saw no reason to wait. Once Nyberg had taken a few photographs of the body, they turned it over. Martinsson flinched and drew back. A few seconds went by before Wallander realized why. Two fingers were missing. The index finger on the right hand and the ring finger on the left. He got up.

“What kind of animals are we dealing with?” Martinsson groaned. “Body snatchers? Corpse mutilators? Necrophiliacs?”

“I don’t know, but clearly this means something. Someone went to a lot of trouble to steal the body and now to return it here.”

Martinsson was pale and Wallander pulled him aside.

“We need to get hold of the night guard who discovered the body the first time,” he said. “We also need a copy of the security guards’ schedule so we can establish the times when they pass by this area. Then we’ll be in a better position to zero in on the time that he was brought back here.”

“Who found him this time?”

“A man called Nils Jönsson form Trelleborg.”

“Was he getting cash?”

“He says he stopped to fill up the car.”

Wallander walked over and talked to the officer who had taken down Jönsson’s information. As Wallander had expected, he had said nothing of interest.

Martinsson came over with information from the security company. “Someone came by here around eleven,” he said.

It was now half past twelve. Wallander recalled that the first time Falk was found the call had come in to the station around midnight. Nils Jönsson said he had discovered the body around a quarter to twelve.

“The body can only have been here for about an hour,” Wallander said. “And I have a decided feeling that the people who brought him back knew exactly when the guards came by.”

“‘The people’?”

“It has to be more than one person,” Wallander said. “I’m convinced of it.”

“What do you think the chances are of finding a witness?”

“Negligible. There aren’t many residential buildings in this area where someone might have looked out a window. And who comes down here late at night?”

“People out walking their dogs.”

“Maybe.”

“They may at least have noticed a car or some unusual activity. People with dogs tend to have habitual natures, and they’d notice something out of the ordinary.”

Wallander agreed. It was worth a try.

“We’ll put an officer down here tomorrow night,” he said. “He can talk to all those dogwalkers and joggers that pass by.”

“Hansson loves dogs,” Martinsson said.

So do I, Wallander thought. But I’ll be thankful if I don’t have to stand out here tomorrow night.

A car slowed down and stopped by the police tape. A young man in a sweatsuit that looked like the one Martinsson was wearing stepped out. Wallander felt like he was slowly being surrounded by the members of a soccer team.

“That’s our security guard,” Martinsson said. “The one from last Sunday. He was off tonight.”

He walked over to talk to him. Wallander went back to the body.

“Someone has cut off two of his fingers,” Nyberg said. “It gets worse and worse.”

Wallander nodded.

“I know you aren’t a doctor,” he said. “But you used the word ‘cut’?”

“Both of them look like clean cuts. There is a small possibility it could have been another kind of instrument if it was powerful enough. The pathologist should be able to tell us. She’s on her way.”

“Susann Bexell?”

“I don’t know for sure.”

The doctor arrived after a half-hour. It was Bexell. Wallander explained the situation to her. The canine unit that Nyberg had requested arrived shortly thereafter. They were supposed to search for the missing fingers.

“I really don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing out here,” Bexell said when Wallander had finished telling her everything. “If he’s dead, there’s not much I can do.”

“I need you to look at his hands. Two fingers are missing.”

Nyberg had started smoking again. Wallander was surprised he wasn’t feeling more exhausted himself. The dog and his officer had started their work. Wallander had a vague recollection of a time when a dog had found a blackened finger. How long ago was that? He couldn’t say. Five, maybe ten years ago.

Bexell worked quickly.

“I think someone cut these fingers off with pruning shears,” she said. “But whether that happened here, or in some other location, I can’t say.”

“It definitely wasn’t here,” Nyberg said.

No one disputed his opinion, nor did anyone bother to ask how he was able to arrive at this conclusion.

Bexell finished up and directed the work of loading the body into the morgue van.

“Hopefully the body won’t disappear this time,” Wallander said. “It would be nice if they could actually bury it this time.”

Bexell and the morgue van left the scene. The dog had given up on the search.

“He would have found a couple of fingers,” his trainer said. “That’s an easy job for him.”

“I still want the area searched again tomorrow,” Wallander said, thinking of Sonja Hökberg’s handbag. “The person who removed them may have discarded them a little farther away. Just to make our job harder.”

It was a quarter to two and the security guard had gone home.

“He agreed with me, ” Martinsson said. “The body was in a different position before.”

“That could mean one of two things,” Wallander said. “Either they simply couldn’t be bothered to arrange it in the original position, or they didn’t know what that was.”

“But how could that be? And why did they bring it back here?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t think there’s any use in staying here. We need to sleep.”

Nyberg was packing up his bags for the second time this evening. The area would remain cordoned off until the next day.

“I’ll see you tomorrow at eight,” Wallander said.

Then they went their separate ways.

Wallander went home and made himself a cup of tea. He drank about half a cup and then went to bed. His back and legs ached. The streetlamp swayed outside his window.

Just as he was about to fall asleep, he was jerked back into consciousness. At first he didn’t know what it was. He listened for noise, but then he realized the disturbance had come from within.

It was something to do with the fingers that had been cut off.

He sat up in bed. It was twenty minutes past two.

I have to know now, he thought. It can’t wait until tomorrow.

He got out of bed and walked out into the kitchen. The phone book lay on the table.

It took him less than a minute to find the phone number he was looking for.

Chapter Eighteen

Siv Eriksson was sleeping.

Wallander hoped he wasn’t tearing her from a dream she didn’t want to leave. She answered the phone after the eleventh ring.

“This is Kurt Wallander.”

“Who?”

“I came by last night.”

She seemed to be waking up slowly.

“Oh, the policeman. What time is it?”

“Half past three. I wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t urgent.”

“What’s happened?”

“We found the body.”

There was a scratchy sound on the other end. He thought she was probably sitting up in bed.

“Come again?”

“We have found Falk’s body.”

Wallander realized as he was saying this that he had never told her about it being missing in the first place. He was so tired it had slipped his mind.

So he told her. She listened without interrupting him.

“Do you really expect me to believe all this?” she said when he was finished.

“I know it sounds strange, but every word is true.”

“Who would do something like that? And why?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

“And the body lay where it was found the first time?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my God!”

He heard her breathing hard.

“But how could it have gotten there?”

“We don’t know that yet, but I’m calling because I’m hoping you’ll help me with something else.”

“Are you planning to come over?”

“Talking on the phone is fine.”

“What is it you want to know? Don’t you ever sleep, by the way?”

“Things have a tendency to get a little hectic at times. Now, the question I’m going to ask you will seem a little odd.”

“Well, that’s no surprise. I think everything about you is a little odd, if you don’t mind my being completely honest while we’re talking like this in the middle of the night.”

Her comment threw him.

“I don’t understand.”

She laughed.

“Don’t take it to heart. I didn’t mean it so seriously. It’s just that I find it funny when people who are obviously thirsty decline a drink, and people who are dying of hunger won’t accept any food. That’s all.”

“I wasn’t thirsty or hungry. If you’re referring to me, that is.”

“Who do you think?”

Wallander wondered why he couldn’t tell her the truth. What was he afraid of? He didn’t think she believed him.

“Have I offended you?” she asked.

“Not at all,” he said. “Can I ask you my question?”

“Of course.”

“Could you tell me how Tynnes Falk used a computer keyboard?”

“Was that your quesiton?”

“Yes. I would appreciate an answer.”

“He used a keyboard the way anyone would.”

“But people often type in different ways. The stereotype of a policeman, for example, is someone slowly pecking away at an old typewriter with one finger.”

“I see what you’re getting at.”

“Did he use all his fingers when he was typing?”

“I don’t think many people do.”

“So he probably only used a couple of fingers?”

“Yes.”

Wallander held his breath. He was about to find out if his hunch had been correct.

“Which fingers did he use?”

“I have to think about it. To make sure I’m right.”

Wallander waited with excitement.

She was fully awake by now and he knew she was trying to do her best to help him.

“I think I’d like to call you back,” she said. “There’s something I’m not sure about. I think it’ll be easier if I sit down at the computer. That will jog my memory.”

Wallander gave her his home phone number.

Then he waited at the kitchen table. His whole head ached. Tomorrow I have to try to get an early night, he thought. Whatever happens. He wondered how Nyberg was doing. If he was sleeping, or tossing restlessly.

Ten minutes later the phone rang. He wondered nervously if it could be a journalist but decided it was too early for that. They didn’t normally call before half past four in the morning. He picked up the receiver. She launched directly into what she had to say.

“It was the index finger on the right hand and the ring finger on the left hand.”

Wallander felt a stir of excitement.

“Are you absolutely certain?”

“Yes. It’s a pretty unusual way of typing, but that’s what he did.”

“Good,” Wallander said. “That confirms something for us.”

“You have to understand that you’ve made me very curious.”

Wallander considered telling her about the missing fingers, but decided to hold off.

“Unfortunately I can’t tell you anything more at this point. Perhaps later.”

“What do you think is going on?”

“We’re still working on that one,” Wallander said. “Don’t forget to fax me that list of clients tomorrow. Good night.”

“Good night.”

Wallander got up and walked over to the window. The temperature had risen to about seven degrees Celsius. The wind was still strong, and there was a light rain. It was four minutes to three. Wallander went back to bed, but the missing fingers danced in front of his eyes for a long time before he managed to sleep.

The man waiting in the shadows by Runnerström Square was counting his breaths. He had learnt to do so as a child. Breathing and patience were connected. A person had to know when it was best to wait.

Listening to his own breaths was also a way to keep his anxiety in check. There had been too many unanticipated turns of events. He knew it wasn’t possible to have total control over a situation, but Tynnes Falk’s death had been a huge blow. Now they were busy reorganizing. Control would soon be achieved, which was just as well since time was running out. But if there was no more interference, they would be able to stay on track with their original schedule.

He thought about the man who lived far away in tropical darkness. A man he had never met, yet one he both feared and respected. He held everything in his hand.

There could be no mistakes.

Mistakes would not be tolerated.

But there were no grounds for his anxiety. Who would be able to break into the computer that functioned as the heart of the operation? It was simply a failure of confidence.

If there had been any mistake so far, it was that he had not managed to kill the policeman in Falk’s apartment. But even so, they were safe. The policeman probably didn’t know anything.

Of course, Falk himself had often said that nothing and no one is ever completely safe. And he had been right. Now he was dead. No one could ever be totally safe.

They had to take care. The man who now stood alone at the helm had told him to hold off and see what happened next. If the policeman was attacked a second time it would only attract unnecessary attention.

He had kept watch outside the building on Apelbergsgatan, and when the policeman made his way to Runnerström Square he had followed him. He had been expecting this, that they would discover the secret office. A little later, another policeman had arrived. He had been carrying bags. The first policeman had then left the apartment, only to return about an hour later. Then they had both left Falk’s office before midnight.

He had continued to wait, all the while counting his breaths. Now it was three o’clock in the morning and the Square was completely deserted. He was cold. He decided that it was very unlikely that anyone would come by at this time. Finally he slid out of the shadows and walked across the street. He unlocked the front door and ran soundlessly up the stairs. He had his gloves on when he unlocked the door to the apartment. He walked in, turned on his flashlight, and looked around. They had found the door to the inner room, but he had expected as much. Without really knowing why, he had developed a kind of respect for the policeman he had tried to kill. The man’s reaction had been very quick despite the fact that he was no longer young. He must have learnt this early in life.

It was always a mistake to underestimate an opponent.

He trained the flashlight on the computer and started it up. The monitor came on, and after a while he was able to search out the file that showed him when the computer was last booted up. Six days ago. The policemen had not touched it.

It was too soon to feel safe, however. It could simply be a question of time. They might be planning to use a specialist. That caused him a pang of anxiety, but the bottom line was that no matter who they used they would not be able to break the codes. Not in a thousand years. Someone with an extreme sense of intuition might have some luck, but how likely was it when they didn’t even know what they were looking for? They couldn’t imagine what this computer was set up to do, not in their wildest dreams.

He left the apartment as silently as he had come and melted back into the shadows.

When Wallander woke up the next morning, he felt as if he had overslept. But when he looked at the clock it was only five minutes past six o’clock. He had slept for three hours. He fell back against the pillows. His head was pounding from lack of sleep. I need ten more minutes, he thought. Make that seven. I just can’t get up right now.

But he forced himself up and walked unsteadily out to the bathroom. His eyes were bloodshot. He stepped into the warm spray of water in the shower and leaned against the wall like a horse. He slowly came back to life.

At five minutes to seven he was in the parking lot at the station. It was still raining softly. Hansson was unusually early. He was in the reception area flipping through a newspaper. He was also wearing a suit and tie, although his normal outfits consisted of wrinkled corduroy pants and shirts that hadn’t been ironed.

“Is it your birthday?” Wallander asked.

Hansson shook his head.

“I happened to see myself in the mirror the other day. Not a pretty picture. I thought I should try to make more of an effort. Anyway, it’s Saturday today. We’ll see how long it lasts.”

They walked over to the lunchroom together and had the obligatory cup of coffee. Wallander told him what had happened during the night.

“That’s crazy,” Hansson said when he finished. “What kind of a sicko dumps a corpse on the street?”

“That’s what we’re paid to find out,” Wallander said. “By the way, you’re in charge of looking out for dogs tonight.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s Martinsson’s idea. He says someone out walking a dog might have noticed something unusual along Missunnavagen last night. We thought you could be posted there just to stop them as they walk by.”

“Why me?”

“You like dogs, don’t you?”

“I have dinner plans tonight. It’s Saturday night, remember?”

“You’ll be able to do both. It’s fine if you get there shortly before eleven.”

Hansson nodded. Even though Wallander had never liked him very much, he had to commend him for his willingess to put in the time when needed.

“I’ll see you at eight in the conference room,” Wallander said. “We need to review and discuss the latest events.”

“It doesn’t seem like we do anything else. And where does it get us?” Wallander sat down at his desk, looked over his notes, and let himself sink deeply into thought. Nothing in all of this makes any sense, he thought. I can’t find a beginning or end. I have no idea why all these people have died. But there has to be a motive in here somewhere.

He got up and walked over to the window, coffee cup in hand.

What would Rydberg do? he thought. Would he have had any advice in this situation? Or would he feel as lost as I do?

He received no answer. Rydberg remained silent.

It was half past seven. Wallander sat down again. He had to prepare for their meeting. After all, he was the one who had to lead the work. In order to try to gain a new perspective on the events, he backtracked. Which events lay at the bottom of all this? What were the possible connections? It was like charting a solar system where the planets circled not a sun, but a black hole.

There’s a main figure in all this, he thought. There’s always a lead character. Not everyone is of equal importance. Some of the people who have died are minor players. But who is who, and how am I supposed to tell them apart? What story is being enacted?

He was back where he started. The only thing he felt sure of was that the taxi driver’s murder was not a potential center, nor a catalyst for the events that followed.

That left Tynnes Falk. There was a connection between him and Sonja Hökberg, indicated by the electrical relay and the blueprint of the power substation. That’s what they had to concentrate on. The connection was tenuous and inexplicable, but it was there.

He pushed away his notes. I can’t see anything in what I’ve written, he thought despondently.

He sat there for a few more minutes. He heard Höglund laugh in the hallway. That didn’t happen every day. Finally he gathered up his papers and headed to the conference room.

They did a thorough review of the material, a task which took almost three hours. The tired and somewhat despondent feeling in the room slowly dissipated.

Nyberg walked in at half past eight. He sat down at the opposite end of the table without saying a word. Wallander looked at him, but Nyberg shook his head. He had nothing urgent to announce.

“Could someone be laying out false tracks deliberately?” Höglund wondered while they were taking a short break to stretch their legs. “Maybe this is all very simple when it comes down to it. Maybe we just need a motive.”

“And what would that be?” Martinsson asked. “A person who robs a taxi driver has very different motives from one who burns a young woman to death, thereby causing blackouts in large parts of Scania. We should also keep in mind that we don’t even know for sure whether Falk was murdered. My inclination is still to chalk it up to a natural death, or at the most an accident.”

“It would be easier if he was murdered,” Wallander said. “Then we could be sure that we’re dealing with a series of criminal events.”

They closed the windows and sat back down at the table.

“It seems to me that the most serious event so far is that someone tried to shoot you,” Höglund said. “It’s not very often that a burglar is willing to kill someone who crosses his path.”

“I don’t know if I would call it more serious than anything else here,” Wallander objected. “But it does say something about the degree of ruthlessness in the people who are behind all this. Whatever it is they’re really trying to do.”

They continued discussing the various crimes, turning each in as many directions as possible. Wallander didn’t say much but listened attentively to the others. During other difficult investigations, it had sometimes been a casually thrown-out phrase, or even a rephrasing of something, that had caused the whole case to break open. They were looking for openings now, and, not least, a center.

During the final hour, each person went through the tasks he or she had completed and what was still waiting to be done. Shortly before eleven Wallander realized they could go no further.

“This is going to take time,” he said. “It’s possible that we’re going to need more personnel. I’ll talk to Holgersson about it. I don’t think there’s any use staying here any longer, though that doesn’t mean we get to take the weekend off. We need to keep going.”

Hansson left to speak to a prosecutor who had demanded to be kept up to date. Martinsson went to his office to call home. Wallander had asked him earlier to accompany him to the office on Runnerström Square when the meeting was over. Nyberg sat at the table for a while longer, pulling at his thin wisps of hair. Then he got up and walked out without saying a word. Höglund was the only one left. Wallander realized she wanted to talk to him about something, so he closed the door.

“I’ve been thinking about something,” she said. “That man who shot at you.”

“Yes?”

“He saw you. And he didn’t hesitate for a second.”

“I’d rather not think too much about that.”

“But maybe you should.”

Wallander looked at her closely.

“What do you mean?”

“I just think maybe you should be extra careful. He may have been taken by surprise, but I don’t think we can rule out that he thinks you know something. And he may try again.”

Wallander was surprised that he hadn’t considered this himself. It frightened him.

“I don’t want to scare you,” she said. “But I had to say it.”

He nodded.

“I’ll think about it. The question is what he thinks I know.”

“Maybe he’s right. Maybe you’re just not aware of what you know.” Another thought came to Wallander.

“Maybe we should post some officers at Apelbergsgatan and Runnerström Square. No patrol cars, nothing too noticeable. Just in case.”

She agreed with him and left to arrange it. Wallander was left with his fear. He thought about Linda. Then he shook out his arms and shoulders and walked out to the reception area to wait for Martinsson.

They stepped into the apartment at Runnerström Square shortly before noon. Although Martinsson was mainly interested in the computer, Wallander wanted to show him the secret room with the altar first.

“Too much time in cyberspace makes people a little strange,” Martinsson said, shaking his head. “This whole apartment gives me the creeps. ”

Wallander didn’t answer. He was thinking about Martinsson’s choice of words. Cyberspace. Could that be ‘c-space’? The strange word Tynnes Falk had used in his diary.

C-space is quiet. No messages from his friends.

What message was he waiting for? Wallander thought. I’d give a lot to know that right now.

Martinsson took off his coat and sat down at the computer. Wallander stood behind him peering over his shoulder.

“This programming looks pretty complicated,” Martinsson said once the computer had been turned on. “I don’t recognize the code. Some of this may be more than I can handle.”

“I’d still like you to do what you can. If you get stuck, we’ll call in the technology division of the National Police and get some of their computer whizzes on it.”

Martinsson didn’t answer. He was absorbed by his task, staring straight ahead at the screen. Then he got up and walked around to look at the computer from the back. As Wallander watched him, he returned to the chair. The screen had come alive with a number of symbols flitting by. Then it settled into an image of the night sky.

Cyberspace. At least Falk is consistent, Wallander thought.

“The computer seems to automatically connect with a server when you turn it on,” Martinsson said. “Do you want me to talk you through what I’m doing?” he added.

“I don’t think I’d be able to follow you.”

Wallander put on his glasses and leaned closer to the screen as Martinsson tried to open one of the files on the hard drive. After clicking on the file, Martinsson frowned.

“What happened?” Wallander asked.

Martinsson pointed to a corner of the screen where a cursor was blinking.

“I’m not one-hundred-percent sure about this,” he said slowly. “But I think someone was just notified that we tried to open this file.”

“How could that happen?”

“Well, this computer is connected to others.”

“And someone at the other end of one of those could now have seen what we’re trying to do?”

“Yes, something like that.”

“Where is this person?”

“He could be anywhere,” Martinsson said. “A remote ranch in California. An island off the coast of Australia. Or in an apartment in this building.”

Wallander shook his head in bafflement.

“When you’re hooked up to the Internet, you’re in the middle of the world wherever you are,” he quoted.

Martinsson had started working on the file again. After about ten minutes he pushed back his chair.

“Everything’s locked,” he said. “There are complicated codes and barriers to everything. There’s no way in.”

“So you give up?”

Martinsson smiled.

“Not just yet,” he said.

Martinsson resumed his tapping on the keyboard but stopped almost at once.

“What is it?”

Martinsson looked at the screen with surprise.

“I’m not sure, but I think someone else used this computer only a few hours ago.”

“Can you find out for sure?”

“I think so.”

Wallander waited while Martinsson kept working. After about ten minutes, he got up.

“I was right,” he said. “Someone was using this computer yesterday. Or rather, last night.”

They looked at each other.

“That means someone other than Falk has access to the material on this computer.”

“And that someone didn’t have to break in to the apartment to get to it,” Martinsson said.

Wallander nodded.

“How does that change the picture?” Martinsson asked.

“We don’t know yet,” Wallander said. “It’s too early.”

Martinsson sat back down at the computer and kept working.

They took a break at half past four. Martinsson invited Wallander to come home with him and have dinner. They were back at the apartment at half past six. Wallander realized that his presence was superfluous, but he didn’t want to leave Martinsson totally alone.

Martinsson kept working until ten o’clock. Then he finally gave up. “I’m not getting through,” he said. “I’ve never seen any security systems that looked like this. There’s the electronic equivalent of miles and miles of barbed wire in here. That and impenetrable firewalls.”

“Well, that’s that then. We’ll give the National Police a call.”

“I guess,” Martinsson said hesitantly.

“Do we have a choice?”

“We do, actually,” Martinsson said. “There’s a young man called Robert Modin who lives in Löderup. Not so far from where your father used to live.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s a nineteen-year-old kid like any other, except he just got out of jail a couple of weeks ago.”

“And why is he an interesting alternative?”

“Because he managed to break into the Pentagon supercomputer about a year ago. He’s considered one of the best hackers in Europe.”

Wallander thought it over. There was something appealing about Martinsson’s suggestion. He didn’t take long to make up his mind.

“Get him,” he said. “Meanwhile I’ll check up on Hansson and the dog-walkers.”

Martinsson got in his car and drove toward Löderup.

Wallander looked around on the dark street. A car was parked a few blocks away. Wallander lifted his hand in greeting.

Then he thought about what Höglund had said about being careful.

He looked around again, then headed up toward Missunnavagen.

The light rain had finally stopped.

Chapter Nineteen

Hansson had parked his car outside the tax authority building.

Wallander saw him from a distance. He was leaning against streetlight reading the newspaper. You can tell from here he’s a cop, Wallander thought. No one can fail to see he’s on the job, though it’s not clear what he’s up to. But he’s not dressed warmly enough. Apart from the golden rule of making it through the day alive, there’s nothing more important in the policeman’s codebook than dressing warmly when working outside.

Hansson was completely absorbed in his newspaper. He didn’t notice Wallander until he was right next to him. Wallander saw he was reading the racing section.

“I didn’t hear you,” Hansson said. “I wonder if my hearing is going.”

“How are the horses today?”

“I suppose I’m living in a fantasy land, like most people. I think one day I’ll sit there with all the right numbers. But see, the horses don’t run the way they’re supposed to. They never do.”

“And how are the dogs?”

“I only just got here. I haven’t seen anyone yet.”

Wallander looked around.

“When I first got here, this part of town was still an empty field,” he said. “None of this was here.”

They started walking along the street. Wallander told him about Martinsson’s valiant efforts to break the code of Falk’s computer. They got to the cash machine and stopped.

“It’s funny how quickly you get used to things,” Hansson said. “I can hardly remember life before these machines. Not that I have any idea how they actually work. Sometimes I imagine a little man sitting inside, someone who counts out all the cash and sends it through to you.”

Wallander thought again about what Erik Hökberg had said, about how vulnerable society had become. The blackout a few days ago had proved him right.

They walked back to Hansson’s car. They still didn’t see any people out walking their dogs.

“I’m going now. How was the dinner?”

“I never went. What’s the point of eating if you can’t have a glass or two?”

Wallander was about to leave when Hansson brought up a conversation he had had earlier in the day with the district attorney.

“Did Viktorsson have anything to say?” Wallander asked.

“Not really.”

“But he must have said something.”

“He just said he couldn’t see any reason to narrow the investigation at this point. The case should still be attacked on all fronts. Without preconceived ideas.”

“Policemen never work without preconceived ideas,” Wallander answered. “He should know that by now.”

“Well, that was what he said.”

“Nothing else?”

“No.”

Wallander had the feeling that Hansson was holding something back. He waited, but Hansson didn’t add anything.

“I think half past twelve should do it,” Wallander told him. “I’m leaving now. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“I should have worn warmer clothes. It’s a chilly night.”

“It’s fall,” Wallander said. “And soon enough it’ll be winter.”

He walked back into town. The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced of the fact that Hansson hadn’t told him everything. By the time he got back to Runnerström Square he realized it could only mean that Viktorsson had made a comment about him, about the alleged assault and the ongoing internal investigation.

It irritated Wallander that Hansson hadn’t told him what he had said, but it didn’t surprise him. Hansson spent his life trying to be everyone’s friend. Wallander suddenly felt how tired he was. Or perhaps he was simply despondent.

He looked around. The undercover police car was still parked in its spot. Apart from that, the street was deserted. He unlocked his car and got in. Just as he was about to start the engine his cell phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket. It was Martinsson.

“Where are you?”

“I went home.”

“Why? Couldn’t you get a hold of Molin?”

“Modin. Robert Modin. No, I started feeling like it wasn’t such a good idea after all.”

“Why not?”

“You know how it is. There are regulations stipulating that we can’t simply bring in whoever we want on a case from outside the force. And Modin has been convincted of a crime — even if his jail time was only a month or so.”

Martinsson was getting cold feet. That had happened before. At times it had even led to conflicts between them. Sometimes Wallander thought Martinsson was too careful. He never used the word “cowardly,” but that was what he meant deep down.

“Strictly speaking, we should get Viktorsson’s approval first,” Martinsson continued. “At the very least we should talk to Lisa.”

“You know I’ll take full responsibility on this,” Wallander said.

“Even so.”

Martinsson had clearly made up his mind on the matter.

“Give me Modin’s address,” Wallander said. “That way you’ll be absolved of all responsibility.”

“You don’t think we should wait?”

“No. Time is running out and I want to know what’s in that computer.”

“What you really need to do is sleep, you know. Have you looked in the mirror recently?”

“Yes, I know,” Wallander said. “Now give me the address.”

He found a pen in the glove compartment, which was stuffed full of papers and folded-up paper plates from fast-food kiosks. Wallander wrote down what Martinsson said on the back of a gas receipt.

“It’s almost midnight,” Martinsson said.

“I know,” Wallander said. “See you tomorrow.”

He hung up and put his phone down on the passenger seat. But before he started the engine, he thought about what Martinsson had said. He was right about one thing. They needed to sleep. What was the point of going out to Löderup in the middle of the night? Robert Modin was probably sleeping. I’ll let it go until tomorrow, he thought.

He started the car and headed east in the direction of Löderup.

He drove fast to try to wake himself up. He wasn’t even acting on his own decisions anymore.

He didn’t need to consult the scrap of paper with the address. He’d known exactly where it was even as he had been writing it down. It was an area only a few kilometers from where his father’s house had been. Wallander also had the feeling that he had met Robert Modin’s father before somewhere. He rolled down the window and let the cold air wash over his face. He was irritated with both Hansson and Martinsson right now. They re bending to pressure, he thought. Kowtowing to their boss.

He turned off the main highway at a quarter past twelve. There was a good chance that he was about to arrive at a dark house whose inhabitants were sleeping. But his anger and irritation had chased the tiredness away from his own body. He wanted to see Robert Modin. And he wanted to take him to Runnerström Square.

He arrived at the house, which was in a rural area. There was a large garden, and a paddock to one side with a lone horse. The house was whitewashed. There were a jeep and a smaller car parked in front. There were still lights on in several of the downstairs windows.

Wallander turned off his engine and got out of the car. At the same time, the porch light came on and a man walked out of the house. Wallander had been right. They had met before somewhere.

He walked over and greeted the man, who was around sixty, thin and slightly bowed. His hands didn’t feel like a farmer’s.

“I recognize you,” Modin said. “Your father lived not too far from here.”

“I know we’ve met before,” Wallander said. “But I can’t remember the context.”

“Your father was out walking in one of the fields around here,” Modin said. “He was carrying a suitcase.”

Wallander remembered that time. His father had had one of his episodes of confusion and had decided to go to Italy. He had packed his suitcase and started walking. Modin had seen him tromping through the mud and had called the police station.

“I haven’t seen you since he passed away,” Modin said. “The house is sold, of course.”

“Gertrud moved to be close to her sister in Svarte. I don’t even know who ended up buying the place.”

“It’s some man from up north who claims to be a businessman,” Modin said. “I suspect he’s actually a moonshiner.”

Wallander had an image of his father’s studio converted into a brew house.

“I guess you’ve come on account of Robert,” Modin said suddenly.

“I thought he had paid for his sins?”

“I’m sure he has,” Wallander said. “Though you’re right that I’m here to see him.”

“What’s he done now?”

Wallander heard the dread in the father’s voice.

“Nothing, nothing. In fact, it seems he may be able to help us with something.”

Modin looked surprised at this, but also relieved. He nodded at the door and Wallander followed him inside.

“The wife’s sleeping,” Modin said. “She wears earplugs.”

Wallander remembered that Modin was a surveyor. He didn’t know how he knew this.

“Is Robert here?”

“He’s at a party with some friends. But he has his phone with him.”

Modin showed him into the living room.

Wallander jumped. One of his father’s paintings was hanging over the sofa. It was the landscape motif without the wood grouse in the foreground.

“He gave it to me,” Modin said. “Whenever it snowed a lot, I would go over and shovel his driveway for him. Sometimes I stopped by and we talked. He was an unusual man, in his own way.”

“That’s an understatement,” Wallander said.

“I liked him. There aren’t too many of his kind anymore.”

“He wasn’t always easy to deal with,” Wallander said. “But I miss him. And it’s true that old men like him are getting more rare. One day there won’t be any left.”

“Who is easy to deal with, anyway?” Modin said. “Are you? I don’t think I could say that about myself. Just ask my wife.”

Wallander sat down on the couch. Modin was cleaning out his pipe.

“Robert is a good boy,” he said. “I thought he was given a harsh sentence, even if it was only a month. The whole thing was just a game to him.”

“I don’t know the whole story,” Wallander said, “other than that he broke into the Pentagon’s computer network.”

“He’s very good with computers,” Modin said. “He bought his first one when he was nine years old, with money he had saved up from picking strawberries. Then he was swallowed up by it. But as long as he continued to do all right in school, it was fine with me. Of course my wife was against it from the start, and now she feels justified by what happened.”

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 a hold of Robert as soon as possible,” he said. “His computer expertise may help us with a case.”

Modin puffed on his pipe.

“Can I ask in what way?”

“I can only tell you that it involves some complicated computer programming we’d like his opinion on.”

Modin nodded and got up.

“I won’t ask any more questions.”

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

Modin came back.

“He’s on his way,” he said. “They’re in Skillinge, so it’ll be a little while.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Not to worry, but that the police needed his help with something.”

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 pulled up outside the house. The front door opened and Robert Modin came in.

Wallander thought he looked like he was thirteen 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.”

Modin was standing in the doorway to the living room.

“I’ll leave you two to talk,” he 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 while we drive.”

The boy was on his guard. Wallander tried to smile.

“Don’t worry.”

“I just have to change my glasses,” Robert Modin said.

He walked upstairs to his room. Wallander walked out 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 like I told you — there’s just something I want him to look at.”

Robert Modin came back and they left the house. It was twenty minutes past one. 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 dialed Hansson’s number. It took a while before anyone answered.

“Were you sleeping?”

“Of course I was sleeping. What do you think? It’s half past one in the morning. I was there until half past twelve. At that point I was so tired I thought I was going to pass out.”

“You tried to call.”

“I think we actually got something.”

Wallander sat up.

“Someone saw something?”

“There was a woman with a German shepherd. She said she saw Tynnes 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 Tynnes Falk in the evenings. He also used to take walks, apparently.”

“What about the night the body was put back?”

“She said she thought she saw a van that night. Around half past eleven. It was parked in front of the cash machine. She noticed it because it wasn’t parked in the parking lot.”

“Did she see the driver?”

“She said she thought she saw a man.”

“Thought?”

“She wasn’t sure.”

“Can she identify the van?”

“I’ve asked her to come into the station tomorrow.”

“Good,” Wallander said. “This may actually give us something.”

“Where are you? At home?”

“Not exactly,” Wallander answered. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

It was two o’clock by the time Wallander pulled up outside the building in Runnerström Square. Wallander looked around. If anything dangerous were to happen, Robert 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 Robert 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 suddenly said 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 no one can see you were there. But I didn’t do that well enough, and that’s why I was caught.”

“So there were people in the Pentagon who could see that a young man in Löderup had paid them a visit?”

“They couldn’t see who I was or what my name was. But they knew it was my computer.”

They went into the building and walked up the stairs. Wallander realized he was tensed up in anticipation of something. Before unlocking the door to the apartment, he listened for noise. Robert Modin watched him closely, but said nothing.

Once inside, Wallander turned on the light and pointed to the computer. He gestured for Robert to sit in the chair. Robert sat down and turned on the machine without hesitation. The usual succession of numbers and symbols started flickering across the screen. Wallander hung back. Robert’s fingers were hovering above the keyboard as if he were about to launch into a piano concert. 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 turned off the computer 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 this.”

Wallander sensed the disappointment, both in himself and in the boy.

“Are you sure?”

The boy shook his head.

“At the very least I need to sleep first,” he said. “And I’ll need a lot of time. Without being rushed.”

Wallander realized the futility of bringing him out here in the middle of the night. Martinsson had been right. He grudgingly admitted to himself that it was Martinsson’s hesitation that had spurred on his actions.

“Do you have anything else planned for tomorrow?”

“I can be here all day.”

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

Wallander drove back to Mariagatan. It was almost three by the time he crawled into bed. He fell asleep quickly, after deciding he would not go in to the office before eleven the next morning.

The woman had been by the police station on Friday, shortly before one o’clock.

She had asked for a map of Ystad, and the receptionist had told her to try either the local Tourist Information office or the bookstore. The woman had thanked her politely, then asked to use the bathroom. The receptionist pointed it out to her. The woman had locked the door and opened the window. Then she closed it again, but only after covering the fasteners with tape. The cleaner who had been there Friday evening didn’t notice anything.

Early Monday morning, around four o’clock, the shadow of a man ascended the wall of the station and disappeared through the bathroom window. The corridors were deserted. Only the faint sound of a radio came from the control room. The man had a map in his hand that had been obtained by breaking into a computer at an architectural firm. He knew exactly where to go.

He pushed open the door to Wallander’s office. A coat with a large yellow spot on the front hung 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 about twenty minutes, but he wasn’t worried that anyone would come in during that time. It was very easy to go into Wallander’s files and examine the material there.

When the man was done, he turned off the light and carefully opened the door. The hallway was empty.

He left the same way he had come.

Chapter Twenty

Sunday morning, the twelfth of October, Wallander woke up at nine o’clock. Even though he had slept only six hours he felt fully rested. Before going in to 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 nine degrees Celsius.

He walked through the front doors of the police station at a quarter past ten. Before going to his office, he walked past the control room and asked who of his colleagues had come in.

“Martinsson is here. Hansson had to go 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 that 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 undercover car,” he added. “That’s very important.”

A few minutes later, Höglund stepped 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 talking. “Do you think he’ll find something important in that computer?”

“I don’t think anything. But we have to know what Falk was up to. Who was he? It seems as if more and more people today are really electronic personalities.”

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

“She’ll be the first person we have who has actually seen anything,” Höglund said.

“We’ll keep our fingers crossed.”

She was leaning against the door frame. It was a newly acquired habit. Usually she came right in and sat in his visitor’s chair.

“I did some thinking last night,” she said. “I was watching TV, but I couldn’t concentrate. The kids 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 at the kitchen table 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’s less important.”

“What was your conclusion?”

“Certain things seem firmly established — for example that there is a connection between Falk and Sonja 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 discussed.”

“And what would that be?”

“That Tynnes Falk and Sonja Hökberg may not have had anything to do with each other directly.”

Wallander saw where she was going. It could be important.

“You mean they are only indirectly connected? Via someone else?”

“The motive may lie somewhere entirely removed from them both, since Falk was dead himself when Hökberg was burned to death. But the same person who killed her later moved his body.”

“That still doesn’t tell us what we’re looking for,” Wallander said.

“There’s no common denominator.”

“I’ve been thinking that maybe we have to start 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 hit me last night while I was sitting in the kitchen was that it seemed a bit too pretty. There isn’t a single smear anywhere. If you don’t have anything against it I’d like to keep digging in his life for a while.”

“That sounds good. We have to get to the bottom of this case in some way. Did he have kids?”

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

“Go ahead. If for no other reason than that it would be useful to determine once and for all if Lundberg’s murder was a simple robbery or not.”

“Are we meeting today?”

“I’ll let you know if we do.”

She disappeared out the door. Wallander thought about what she had said, then went out to the lunchroom and helped himself to coffee. He picked up a copy of the day’s paper that was lying on a table. Once he got back to his office he started leafing through it absently, but he stopped when something caught his eye. An ad for a dating service, with the unoriginal name of “Computerdate.” Wallander read the ad thoroughly. Without hesitating he turned on his computer and quickly threw an ad together. He knew if he didn’t do it now he would never get around to it. No one would ever have to know. He could be completely 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 affixed a stamp. Then he put it in his pocket. Once he was done, he realized he actually felt excited about it. He would probably not get any replies, or if he did they would be ones he would immediately discard. But the sense of excitement was there. He could not deny it.

Then Hansson appeared in the doorway.

“She’s here,” he said. “Alma Högström, our witness.”

Wallander got up and followed him to one of the small conference rooms. Alma Högström was a fit-looking woman in her mid seventies. A German shepherd was lying on the floor next to her. The dog regarded them suspiciously. Wallander greeted her, sensing that she had dressed up for her visit to the police station.

“Your willingness to speak to the police on this matter is greatly appreciated,” he said. “Especially given that it is a Sunday.”

He marvelled at the stilted phrases that had just left his mouth. How could he still sound so dry and impersonal after all these years?

“If the police need any information one may have, surely it is one’s duty to try to be of assistance.”

She’s even worse than I am, he thought with a sigh. It’s like watching a bad film from the thirties.

Slowly they went through what she thought she had seen. Wallander let Hansson do the questioning while he wrote down her answers.

She had observed a dark van at half past eleven. She was sure of the time because she had just looked down at her watch.

“It’s an old habit,” she said apologetically. “It’s ingrained in me by now. I always had one client in the chair and a whole waiting room full of others. Time always went too fast.”

Hansson tried to get her to identify the kind of van it had been. He had brought along a folder he had assembled himself a few years ago. It had pictures of different models of cars, as well as a color chart. Naturally there were all kinds of computer programs for this now, but Hansson, like Wallander, had trouble adjusting his work habits.

After a while they concluded it had possibly been a Mercedes. Either navy blue or black.

She hadn’t seen the license plates or if there was a driver or not. But she had seen a shadowy figure behind the van.

“Well, I wasn’t the one who saw him,” she explained. “It was my dog, Steadfast. He pricked up his ears and strained in that direction.”

“I know it may be hard to describe what you saw,” Hansson said. “But I’d like you to try. Was it a man or a woman?”

She thought for a long time before answering.

“The figure was not wearing a skirt,” she said finally. “So I guess I think it was a man.”

Hansson continued.

“What happened after that?”

“I took my usual walk.”

Hansson spread a map on the table. She described her route.

“That means you passed by the cash machine on your way back. Was the van gone then?”

“Yes.”

“When was that?”

“About ten past twelve.”

“And how do you know that?”

“I got home at twenty-five minutes past twelve. It takes me fifteen minutes to walk home from that spot.”

She showed him where she lived on the map. Wallander and Hansson agreed with her. It would take about that long.

“But you didn’t see anything in that area when you walked home?” Hansson continued. “And your dog didn’t react in any way?”

“No.”

“Isn’t that surprising?” Hansson said to Wallander.

“The body must have been stored at a low temperature,” Wallander said. “Then it wouldn’t have a smell. We can ask Nyberg, or one of the canine units.”

“I’m very glad I didn’t see anything,” Alma Högström said firmly.

“It’s terrible even to imagine it. People delivering dead bodies in the middle of the night.”

“Did you know that this man you normally saw during your evening walks was called Falk?” Wallander asked.

Her answer came as a surprise.

“He was my patient once upon a time. He had good teeth. I only saw him a couple of times, but I have a good memory for faces and names.”

“He often took walks at night?” Hansson asked.

“I used to meet him several times a week. He was always alone. I said hello sometimes, but he didn’t seem to want to be disturbed.”

Hansson had no more questions. He looked over at Wallander, who nodded.

“We may be in touch if we need anything else,” he said. “If you think of anything in the meantime, we would of course like to hear from you.”

Hansson followed her out, while Wallander remained seated.

He thought about what she had told them. Nothing had really emerged that helped them make more sense out of the case.

Hansson came back and picked up his folders.

“A black or navy blue Mercedes van,” he said. “I guess we should look into cars that have been stolen recently.”

Wallander nodded.

“And talk to one of the canine units about the question of smell. At least we have a fixed time for the event. That counts for a lot at this stage.”

Wallander returned to his office. It was a quarter to twelve. He called Martinsson and told him what had happened during the night. Martinsson listened without saying a word. It irritated Wallander but he managed to control himself. Instead he said he would meet Martinsson in the reception area and give him the keys to the apartment.

“Maybe I’ll learn something,” Martinsson said when they met. “Watching a real master climb the firewalls.”

“I assure you the responsibility is still all mine,” Wallander said. “But I don’t want him to be left alone.”

Martinsson noticed Wallander’s gentle irony and immediately became defensive.

“We can’t all be like you,” he said. “Some of us actually take police regulations seriously.”

“I know,” Wallander said patiently. “And of course you’re right. But I’m still not going to Viktorsson or Lisa for permission on this.”

Martinsson disappeared out the front doors.

Wallander felt hungry. He walked down into town and had lunch at István’s Pizzeria. István was very busy. They never had a chance to talk about Fu Cheng and his fake credit card. On the way back to the station, Wallander posted his letter to the dating service. He continued on in the firm conviction that he would not be receiving a single reply.

He had just reached his office when the phone rang. It was Nyberg. Wallander went back out into the hallway. Nyberg’s office was on the floor below. When Wallander got there, he saw the hammer and knife that had been used in Lundberg’s murder lying on Nyberg’s desk.

“As of today I’ve been a policeman for forty years,” Nyberg intoned grumpily when he came in. “I started on a Monday, but of course my meaningless anniversary has to fall on a Sunday.”

“If you’re so sick of your job, you should just quit,” Wallander shot back.

He was surprised that he’d lost his temper. He had never done so with Nyberg before. In fact, he always tried to be as tactful as possible around his irascible colleague.

But Nyberg didn’t seem to take offense. He looked at Wallander with curiosity.

“Well, well,” he said. “I thought I was the only one around here with a temper.”

“Forget it. I didn’t mean it,” Wallander mumbled.

That made Nyberg angry.

“Of course you meant it. That’s the whole point. I don’t know why people have to be so afraid of showing a little temperament. And anyway, you’re right. I’m just bitching.”

“Maybe that’s what we’re all reduced to in the end,” Wallander said.

Nyberg pulled the plastic bag with the knife over toward him with impatience.

“The results of the fingerprinting have come back,” he said. “There are two different sets on this knife.”

Wallander leaned in attentively.

“Eva Persson and Sonja Hökberg?”

“Exactly.”

“So Persson may not be lying in this particular case?”

“It seems it’s at least a possibility.”

“That Hökberg is responsible for the murder, you mean?”

“I’m not implying anything. That’s not my job. I’m just telling you the facts. It’s a legitimate possibility, that’s all.”

“What about the hammer?”

“Only Hökberg’s prints. No one else’s.”

Wallander nodded.

“That’s good to know.”

“We know more than that,” Nyberg said, leafing through the papers that were strewn across his desk. “Sometimes the pathologists exceed even their own expectations. They have determined that the blows were inflicted in stages. First he was hit with the hammer, then with the knife.”

“And not the other way around?”

“No. And not at the same time.”

“How can they determine that?”

“I only know the approximate answer to that, but it’s hard to explain.”

“Does this mean Hökberg switched weapons in the middle of her attack?”

“I think so. Eva Persson had the knife in her purse, but she gave it to Sonja when asked.”

“Like an operation,” Wallander said with a shudder. “The surgeon asking for tools.”

They thought about this for a moment. Nyberg broke the silence. “There was one more thing. I’ve been thinking about that bag out at the power substation. It was lying in the wrong place.”

Wallander waited for him to continue. Nyberg was an excellent and thorough forensic technician, but he could also sometimes show unexpected investigative skills.

“I went out there,” he said, “and I brought the bag with me. I tried to throw it to the spot by the fence where it had been found, but I could never throw it that far.”

“Why not?”

“You remember what the place looks like. There are towers, poles, high voltage lines and barbed wire everywhere. The bag always got stuck on something.”

“That means someone must have walked all the way over there?”

“Maybe. But the question then is, Why?”

“You have an idea?”

“The most natural explanation would be that the bag was placed there deliberately and that someone wanted it to be found — but maybe they didn’t want it to be found immediately.”

“Someone wanted the body to be identified, but not immediately?”

“Yes, that’s what I was thinking. But then I discovered something. The place where the bag was found is in the direct beam of one of the spotlights.”

Wallander sensed where Nyberg was going, but said nothing.

“I’m simply wondering now if the bag was there because someone had been searching through it, looking for something.”

“And maybe found something?”

“That’s what I think, but it’s your job to figure these things out.”

Wallander got up.

“Good work,” he said. “You may just have hit on something.”

Wallander went back up the stairs and stopped by Höglund’s office. She was bent over a stack of papers.

“I want you to contact Sonja Hökberg’s mother,” he said. “Find out what Sonja normally had in her purse.”

Wallander told her about Nyberg’s idea and she nodded.

Wallander didn’t bother to wait while she made the call. He felt restless, and he started back toward his office. He wondered how many miles he had covered by walking to and fro in these corridors all these years. He heard the phone in his office and hurried over. It was Martinsson.

“I think it’s time for you to come down here,” he said.

“Why?”

“Robert Modin is a proficient young man.”

“What’s happened?”

“Exactly what we were hoping for. We’re in. The computer has opened its doors.”

Wallander hung up.

It’s finally happened, he thought. It’s taken some time, but we finally did it.

He took his coat and left the station.

It was a quarter to two on Sunday, the twelfth of October.