Firewall

Chapter Twenty-One

Carter woke up at dawn because the air conditioning unit suddenly stopped. He lay tensed between the sheets listening to the darkness. There was the constant drone of cicadas, and a dog barked in the distance. The power had gone out again. That happened every other night here in Luanda. Savimbi’s bandits were always looking for ways to cut the power to the city. In a few minutes the room would be filled with stifling heat. But he didn’t know if he had the energy to go down to the room past the kitchen and start up the generator. He didn’t know what was worse: the unbearable heat or the throbbing noise from the generator.

He turned his head and looked at the time. It was a quarter past five. He heard one of the guards snoring outside. That was most likely Jose. As long as Roberto kept himself awake, it didn’t matter. Carter shifted his head and felt the muzzle of his gun under the pillow. When it came down to it, beyond the guards and fences, this was his real protection against the countless burglars hiding in the dark. He understood them, of course. He was a white man, he was wealthy. In a poor and downtrodden country like Angola, crime was a given. If he had been one of the poor, he would have robbed people himself.

Suddenly the air conditioning started up again. That meant it wasn’t the bandits who had caused the problem, it was simply a technical glitch. The power lines were old, left over from colonial times under the Portuguese. How many years ago that was he could no longer remember.

Carter had trouble falling asleep again. He thought about the fact that he was about to turn sixty. It was in many ways a miracle that he had reached this age given his unpredictable and dangerous lifestyle.

He pulled away the sheet and let the cool air touch his skin. He didn’t like to wake up at dawn. He was most vulnerable during these hours before sunrise, left to the dark and his own memories. He could get worked up over old wrongs that had been done to him. It was only when he focused his thoughts on the revenge he was planning that he could calm himself again. But by then several hours had often passed. The sun would be up, the guards would have started talking, and Celine would be unlocking the door to the kitchen in order to come in and make his breakfast.

He pulled the sheet back up over his body. His nose started to itch and he knew he was about to sneeze. He hated to sneeze. He hated his allergies. They were a weakness he despised. The sneezing could come at any time. Sometimes it interrupted him in the middle of a lecture and made it impossible for him to continue.

Other times he broke out in hives. Or else his eyes kept tearing up.

He pulled the sheet all the way up over his mouth. This time he won out. The need to sneeze died away. He started thinking about all the years that had gone by and all that had taken place that had led to his lying in a bed in Luanda, capital of Angola.

Thirty years earlier, he had been a young man working at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. He had been convinced that the bank had the potential to do good in the world, or at the very least shift the balance of justice in the Third World’s favor. The World Bank had been founded to provide the huge loans that were needed in the poverty-stricken parts of the world and that exceeded the capacity of individual nations and banks. Although many of his friends at the University of California had told him he was wrong, that no reasonable solutions to the economic inequality of the world were addressed at the World Bank, he had maintained his beliefs. At heart he was no less radical than they. He too marched in the antiwar demonstrations. But he had never believed in the potential of civil disobedience to change the world. Nor did he believe in the small and squabbling socialist organizations. He had come to the conclusion that the world had to be changed from within the existing social structures. If you were going to try to shift the balance of power, you had to stay close to its source.

But he had a secret. It was what had made him leave Columbia University and go to California. He had been in Vietnam for one year, and he had liked it.

He had been stationed close to An Khe most of the time, along the important route westward from Qui Nhon. He knew he had killed many soldiers during that year and that he had never felt remorse over this. While his buddies had turned to drugs for solace, he had maintained a disciplined approach to his work. He had known that he was going to survive the war; that he would not be among the bodies sent home in plastic sacks. And it was then, during the stifling nights patrolling the jungle, that he had arrived at his belief that you had to stay close to the source of power in order to affect it. Now, as he lay in the wet heat of the Angolan night, he sometimes experienced the feeling that he was back in the jungle. He knew he had been right.

He had understood fairly quickly that there was going to be an opening at the executive level in Angola, and he had immediately learnt Portuguese. His career climb had been meteoric. His bosses had seen his potential, although there were others with more experience who had applied for the same post. He had been appointed to a desirable position with little or no discussion.

That was his first contact with Africa, with a poor and shattered country. He didn’t count his days in Vietnam. He had been an unwelcome intruder there. Here he was welcome. At first he spent his time listening, seeing, and learning. He had marveled at the joy and dignity that flourished among the hardships.

It had taken him almost two years to see that what the Bank was doing was completely wrong. Instead of helping the country to gain true independence and enable the rebuilding of the war-torn land, the Bank merely served to protect the very rich. He noted that the people around him treated him with deference because of his high rank. Behind the radical rhetoric there were only corruption, weakness, and greed. There were others — independent intellectuals and the odd politician — who saw what he saw. But they were not in positions of power. No one listened to them.

At last he could stand it no longer. He tried to explain to his superiors that the strategies of the Bank were misinformed. But he received no response, despite making transatlantic flights time and time again to persuade those at the top in the head office. He wrote countless memos but never received anything other than well-meaning indifference. At one of these meetings, he finally sensed he had become labeled as difficult. Someone who was beginning to fall outside the pale. One evening he spoke with his oldest mentor, a financial analyst named Whitfield who had followed his career since his undergraduate days and who had helped recruit him. They met for dinner at a small restaurant in Georgetown, and Carter had asked him straight out: Was he alienating everyone? Was there really no one who could see that he was right and that the Bank was wrong? Whitfield had answered just as candidly, and told him he was asking the wrong question. It didn’t matter if Carter was right or not. What mattered was Bank policy.

The following evening, Carter had flown back to Luanda. A dramatic decision was taking shape in his head, as he leaned back into his comfortable first-class seat.

It took several sleepless nights for him to see what it was that he actually wanted.

It was also at this time that he met the man who would play a decisive role in convincing him that he was doing the right thing. In hindsight, Carter had often marveled at the mixture of conscious decisions and random coincidences that made up a person’s life.

It had been an evening in March in the middle of the 1970s. He had been suffering a long period of sleeplessness as he searched for a way out of his dilemma. One evening he felt restless and decided to go to Metropol, one of the restaurants down in Luanda’s harbor. He liked going there because there was little chance he would run into anyone from the Bank. Or any of Angola’s elite, for that matter. At Metropol he was usually left in peace. At the next table, that night, had been a man who spoke very poor Portuguese, and since the waiter couldn’t speak English, Carter had stepped in to translate.

Then the two of them had started talking. It turned out that the man was Swedish and was in Luanda on a consulting project commissioned by the state-owned telecom sector, which was grossly neglected and underdeveloped. Carter could never say afterward exactly what it was that sparked his interest in this man. He usually maintained an element of reserve in his interactions with others, assuming that most of the people he met were his enemies. But there had been something about this man that lowered his guard, even though Carter was a suspicious person by nature.

It had not taken long for Carter to understand that the man, who soon joined him at his own table, was highly intelligent. He was not merely an able engineer and technician, but someone who seemed to have read up on and understood much of Angola’s colonial history and present political situation.

The man’s name was Tynnes Falk. Carter had only learned this when it was late and they had said good-bye. They had been the last to leave the establishment. A lone waiter was slumped half-asleep at the bar. Their chauffeurs were waiting outside. Falk was staying at the Hotel Luanda. They decided to meet the following evening.

Falk had only intended to stay in Luanda for the three months that the project was expected to take, but after it was over, Carter offered him a new consulting project. It was mainly an excuse to retain him, so that they could continue their conversations.

Falk therefore returned to Luanda two months later. That was when he told Carter he was unmarried. Carter had likewise remained unmarried, though he had lived with a succession of women and fathered three girls and one boy, whom he almost never saw. In Luanda he now had two black lovers. One was a professor at the local university, the other the ex-wife of a cabinet minister. He kept these liaisons secret, except from his staff. He had avoided forming relationships within the Bank. Since Falk seemed very lonely, Carter helped him into a suitable relationship with a woman named Rosa, who was the daughter of a Portuguese businessman and his Angolan housekeeper.

Falk had started to feel at home in Africa. Carter got him a nice house with a garden and a view of Luanda’s beautiful harbor. He also wrote a contract that rewarded Falk excessively for the minimal work he was expected to perform.

They continued their conversations. Whatever subject they discussed in those long tropical nights, they always found that their political and moral opinions coincided almost exactly. It was the first time Carter had met anyone whom he could confide in fully. Falk felt the same way.

It was during these long African nights that the plan began to take shape. Carter listened with fascination to the surprising things Falk told him about the electronic world where he lived and worked. Through Falk, he had come to understand that he who controlled electronic communication controlled everything. It was especially what Falk told him about how wars would be fought in the future that excited him. Bombs would be nothing more than computer viruses smuggled into the enemy’s storehouse of weapons. Electronic signals could eliminate the enemy’s stock markets and telecom networks. The time of nuclear submarines was over. Future threats would come barrelling down the miles of fiberoptic cables that were slowly entangling the world like a spiderweb.

They were in agreement about the need for patience, from the beginning. Never to rush. One day their time would come. And then they would strike.

They complemented each other. Carter had contacts. He knew how the Bank functioned. He understood the details of the financial world and how delicate the economic balance of the world really was. Falk was the technician who could translate ideas into practical reality.

They spent the evenings together for many months, refining their plans.

They had been in regular contact during the past twenty years. From the very beginning they had known the time was not quite at hand. One day it would be.

Carter was jerked out of his thoughts by a sudden noise and instinctively reached for the gun under his pillow. But it was only Celine, who was fumbling with the locks on the kitchen door. Irritated, he thought that he ought to fire her. She made too much noise getting his breakfast ready. The eggs were never cooked the way he liked them, and she was ugly, fat, and stupid besides. Celine could neither read nor write and had nine children. Her husband spent most of his time chatting in the shade of a tree. If he wasn’t drunk.

Once, Carter had been convinced that these were the people who would create the new order. But he didn’t believe it any longer. And then it was just as well to destroy the world, smashing it into bits.

The sun had already pulled itself up over the horizon. Carter thought again about what had happened. Tynnes Falk was dead. That which should never have happened, had happened. They had always been aware of the fact that something beyond their control might occur and interfere with their plans. They had included this in their calculations and had taken every precaution they could think of. But they had never been able to imagine that one of them might die. A meaningless and unplanned death. But this was what had happened. When Carter first got that call from Sweden, he had refused to believe it was true. But he had been forced to accept it at last. His friend Tynnes Falk no longer existed. It hurt him and changed all their plans. And it had happened at the worst possible time — right when they were about to strike. Now he was the only one left on the threshold of the great moment. But life always consisted of more than carefully laid plans and conscious decisions. There were always coincidences.

Their great operation already had a name in his head: Jacob’s Marsh. On one rare occasion, Falk had drunk a lot of wine and started talking about his childhood. He had grown up on an estate where his father was some kind of caretaker. There had been a marsh next to a particular strip of forest. It had been bordered by beautiful, chaotic wildflowers, according to Falk. He had played there many times as a child, watching the dragonflies and having the best times in his life. He had explained why it was called Jacob’s Marsh. A long time ago a man named Jacob had drowned himself there due to unrequited love.

The marsh had acquired extra significance for Falk later in life, not least after his meeting with Carter and the realization that they shared some of their most fundamental understandings of life. The marsh became a symbol for the chaos of life, where the only way open in the end was to go and drown yourself. Or at the very least make sure everyone else did.

Jacob’s Marsh. That was a good name. Not that the operation needed a name, but it was a way to honor Falk’s memory. A gesture only Carter would be able to appreciate.

He stayed in bed a few more moments and thought about Falk. But when he realized he was starting to get sentimental he got up, took a shower, and went down to the dining room to eat his breakfast.

He spent the rest of the morning in his living room, listening to some Beethoven string quartets until he couldn’t stand Celine’s clatter in the kitchen any longer. Then he went to the beach and took a walk. His chauffeur and bodyguard, Alfredo, walked a short distance behind him. Whenever Carter went into Luanda and saw the social disintegration, garbage heaps, poverty, and misery he felt the action he was taking was justified.

He walked along the ocean and looked back at the decomposing city from time to time. Whatever rose from the ashes after the fire he was going to start would be better than this.

He was back at the house shortly before eleven. Celine had gone home. He drank a cup of coffee and a glass of water. Then he retired to his study on the second floor. It had a breathtaking view over the harbor, but he pulled the curtains shut. He liked the evenings best. He needed to keep the strong African sun away from his sensitive eyes. He sat down at the computer and went through his daily routine.

Somewhere deep inside that electronic world, an invisible clock was ticking. Falk had created it from Carter’s instructions. It was Sunday, the twelfth of October, only eight days away from D-day.

He was done with his regular checks at a quarter past eleven.

He was about to turn off the computer when he froze. A small icon had just started flashing in the corner of the screen. The rhythm was two short flashes, then one long. He took out the manual that Falk had written for him and looked through it until he found the right page.

At first he thought there had to be a mistake. Then he realized it was all too true. Someone had just broken through the first layer of security into Falk’s computer in Sweden. In that little town, Ystad, that Carter had only ever seen in postcards.

He stared at the screen, unable to believe his eyes. Falk had sworn that the system would be impossible to break into.

But still someone had done it.

Carter started sweating. He forced himself to remain calm. There were many layers to the security system in Falk’s computer, and the innermost core of the program was buried under miles and miles of decoys and firewalls that no one could penetrate.

But someone was trying to get in.

Carter thought hard. He had immediately sent someone to Ystad after hearing of Falk’s death. There had been several unfortunate incidents, but until now Carter had thought that everything was under control, especially since he had reacted so quickly and without hesitation.

He decided that everything was still under control, even though he couldn’t deny that someone had broken through the first line of defense in Falk’s computer and was possibly trying to go further. This needed to be taken care of as soon as possible.

Who could it be? Carter had trouble imagining that it was one of the policemen he had heard about through his informant, the ones who seemed to be sorting out the details surrounding Falk’s death and the other events with what appeared to be complacency.

But who else could it be?

He found no answer and remained motionless in front of his computer as dusk fell over Luanda. When he finally got up from the desk he was still outwardly calm.

But a problem had arisen, and it was something that needed to be rectified.

He missed Falk more than ever.

He typed his message and sent it off into the electronic realm.

His answer came after about a minute.

Wallander was standing behind Martinsson. Robert Modin was sitting in front of the computer, where an ever-changing matrix of numbers was rushing by on the screen. Then the screen started to calm down. Only the occasional ones and zeroes flashed by. Then it became completely dark. Robert looked at Martinsson, who nodded. Robert continued to tap commands into the computer, and new hordes of numbers started flashing by. Then they stopped again. Both Martinsson and Wallander leaned over.

“I have no idea what this is,” Robert said. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“Could it be a computation of some kind?” Martinsson wondered. Robert shook his head.

“I don’t think so. It looks like a system of numbers awaiting a command.”

It was Martinsson’s turn to shake his head.

“Can you explain what you mean?” he asked.

“It can’t be a calculation. There is no evidence of any equations here. The numbers only relate to themselves. I think it looks more like a code.”

Wallander was unsatisfied. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but it was hardly a horde of meaningless numbers.

“Didn’t people stop with codes after the Second World War?” he asked, but there was no answer from the other two.

They kept staring at the numbers.

“It’s something to do with the number twenty,” Robert said suddenly.

Martinsson leaned forward again, but Wallander’s back was starting to hurt and he remained upright. Robert pointed and explained what he meant to Martinsson, who nodded and listened with interest. Wallander’s thoughts started to drift.

“Could it be something to do with the year 2000?” Martinsson asked. “Isn’t that when electronic chaos is supposed to break out and all computers are going to go haywire?”

“It’s not 2000,” Robert said stubbornly. “It’s the number twenty. And no computers ever simply go haywire. It’s people who do that.”

“It will be the twentieth in eight days,” Wallander said absently.

Modin and Martinsson kept bouncing ideas back and forth. They called up new numbers on the screen. Wallander was starting to get impatient, but he knew that what they were doing could be important.

The cell phone in his pocket rang. He walked over to the doorway and answered. It was Höglund.

“I may have found something,” she said.

Wallander walked out into the little hallway.

“What is it?”

“You know how I told you I was going to root around in Lundberg’s life?” she asked. “First I was going to talk to his sons. The oldest one’s name is Carl-Einar Lundberg. Suddenly it hit me that I had seen that name before. I just couldn’t remember where it was.”

The name meant nothing to Wallander.

“I started combing through the computer registers.”

“I thought only Martinsson could do that.”

“Truth be told, I think soon you’ll be the only one who can’t do it.”

“What did you find?”

“Something interesting. Carl-Einar Lundberg was tried for a crime a number of years ago. I think it was during that time that you were on sick leave.”

“What did he do?”

“Well, apparently nothing, since he got off. But he was being tried for rape.”

Wallander thought for a moment.

“It might be something,” he said. “I guess it’s worth looking into, though I have to admit I have trouble fitting it into either Falk’s or Hökberg’s death.”

“All the same, I think I’ll follow it through,” Höglund said. “Like we agreed I would.”

The conversation was over. Wallander went back to the others.

We’re not getting anywhere, he thought in a sudden spasm of hopelessness. We don’t even know what we’re looking for. We’re totally lost.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Robert Modin stopped shortly after six o’clock. He was tired and complained of a headache.

But he wasn’t giving up. He squinted up at Martinsson and Wallander through his glasses and said he was more than happy to keep going the following day.

“But I need some time to think,” he said. “I need to come up with a plan of attack, and consult some of my friends.”

Martinsson arranged for Modin to be driven back to Löderup.

“Do you think he meant what he said?” Wallander asked Martinsson when they had returned to the police station.

“That he needed time to think and plan his course of action?” Martinsson said. “That’s what we do when we solve problems. Isn’t that what we asked him to do?”

“He sounded like an old doctor who had a patient with unusual symptoms. He said he was going to consult with friends.”

“That just means he’s going to get in touch with other hackers. Maybe via the Internet. Comparing it to a doctor and an unusual case of illness is actually quite accurate.”

Martinsson seemed to have gotten over the fact that they did not have official permission for working with Robert Modin. Wallander thought it was just as well not to go into that again.

Both Höglund and Hansson were in. Otherwise it was pleasantly empty at the station. Wallander thought in passing about the mountain of other work that was growing on his desk. Then he told the others to assemble for a quick meeting. Symbolically at least, they were at the end of a working week. What lay before them was as yet unclear.

“I talked to one of the canine units,” Hansson said. “An officer called Norberg. He’s actually in the process of getting a new dog, since Hercules is getting too old.”

“Isn’t that dog already dead?” Martinsson asked.

“Well, he’s done for at any rate. He’s blind, apparently.”

Martinsson burst into tired laughter.

“That would be something to write about in the papers,” he said. “The police and their blind search dogs.”

Wallander was not amused. He would miss the old dog, perhaps even more than he would miss some of his colleagues when the time came.

“I’ve been thinking about this business of dog names,” Hansson continued. “I guess I can understand calling a dog Hercules, but I still can’t get my head around Steadfast.”

“We don’t have any police dogs by that name, do we?” Martinsson asked.

Wallander slammed his hands down on the table. It was the most authoritative gesture at his disposal.

“That’s enough of that. Now, what did Norberg say?”

“That it was reasonable to assume that objects or bodies that were frozen or had been frozen could stop giving off a scent. Dogs can have trouble finding dead bodies in winter when it’s very cold.”

Wallander quickly proceeded to his next point.

“What about the van? Any news?”

“A Mercedes van was stolen in Ange a couple of weeks ago.”

Wallander had to think hard where that was.

“Where is Angle?”

“Outside Luleå,” Martinsson said.

“The hell it is,” Hansson broke in. “It’s closer to Sundsvall.”

Höglund got up and went over to the map on the wall. Hansson was right.

“It could be the one,” Hansson said. “Sweden isn’t a big country.”

“It doesn’t sound right to me,” Wallander said. “But there could be other stolen cars that haven’t been reported yet. We’ll have to keep an eye on incoming reports.”

The discussion was turned over to Höglund.

“Lundberg has two sons who are as unlike each other as could be. Nils-Emil, the one who lives in Malmö, works as a janitor in a local school. I tried to get him over the phone. His wife said he was out training with his orienteering club. She was very talkative. Apparently Lundberg’s death came as a hard blow to her husband, who is also a regular churchgoer. It’s the younger brother who is of more interest to us. Carl-Einar was accused of rape in 1993. The girl’s name was Englund. But he was never charged.”

“I remember that case,” Martinsson said. “It was a horrible incident.”

Wallander’s only memories from this time were of long walks on the beaches of Skagen in Denmark. Then a lawyer had been murdered and Wallander had returned to his duties, much to his own surprise.

“Were you in charge of that investigation?” Wallander asked.

Martinsson made a face.

“It was Svedberg.”

The room fell silent as they thought about their dead colleague.

“I haven’t made it through all the paperwork yet,” Höglund continued after a while. “So I don’t know why he wasn’t found guilty.”

“No one was ever found guilty of that crime,” Martinsson said. “Whoever did it went scot-free. We could never find another suspect. I remember quite clearly that Svedberg was convinced it was Lundberg. I’d never thought about the fact that he was Johan Lundberg’s son.”

“Even if that’s the case,” Wallander said, “does that really account for the fact that his father was robbed and killed? Or that Sonja Hökberg was subsequently burned to death? Or that Tynnes Falk’s fingers were cut off?”

“It was a brutal rape,” Höglund said. “You have to at least imagine a perpetrator out there who was capable of horrendous violence. This girl Englund was in the hospital a long time with severe injuries both to her head and other parts of her body.”

“Of course, we’ll look at this more closely,” Wallander said. “But I still don’t think he’ll turn out to have anything to do with this case. There’s something else behind all of this, even if we don’t yet know what that is.”

Wallander went on to tell the group about the work that Robert Modin was undertaking with Falk’s computer. Neither Hansson nor Höglund made any comments about an unauthorized expert who had served time for advanced computer crime being brought in.

“I don’t really get this,” Hansson said when Wallander finished. “What do you think is in that computer? A confession? An account of everything that’s happened? A reason for all this?”

“I don’t know if there’s anything in there,” Wallander said simply. “But we have to know what Falk was up to, just as we have to find out who he was. I have the impression that he was a strange man.”

Hansson clearly doubted the value of spending so much time on Falk’s computer, but he didn’t say anything else. Wallander realized that the time had come to end the meeting. Everyone was tired and needed to rest.

“We have to continue in this same vein,” he started, then interrupted himself and turned in Höglund’s direction. “Whatever happened with Sonja Hökberg’s bag?”

“I forgot about that,” she said apologetically. “Her mother said she thought maybe an address book was missing.”

“Maybe?”

“I think she was telling the truth. Sonja Hökberg was a very private person. Her mother simply thought she remembered Sonja having a little black address book where she wrote down people’s phone numbers. In which case it was missing. But she couldn’t be sure.”

“If this is true, it’s an important bit of information. Eva Persson should be able to confirm its existence.”

Wallander thought for a while before continuing.

“I think we should reassign certain tasks,” he said. “From now on I want Höglund to concentrate entirely on Sonja Hökberg and Eva Persson. There has to be a boyfriend out there somewhere, someone who could give her a ride out of town. Keep looking for any information that can tell us who she was and what she did. Martinsson will keep Robert Modin in a good mood. Someone else can check up on Lundberg’s son — I can do that. And I’ll keep checking into Falk’s life. Hansson can be in charge of keeping things together. Keep Viktorsson informed of our activities, keep trying to locate potential witnesses, and keep trying to find possible explanations for how a body can disappear from a morgue. Last but not least, someone has to drive up to Vaxjo and speak with Eva Persson’s father. Just so we can cross that off the list.”

Wallander called the meeting to an end and they all stood up. Wallander got out as quickly as he could. It was already half past seven. Even though he had not had much to eat all day, he didn’t feel hungry. He drove back to Mariagatan and looked around before unlocking the front door.

He spent the next hour cleaning up the apartment and gathering all his laundry. Now and again he stopped in front of the television set and looked at the news. One segment caught his eye. An American general was interviewed about what future wars would look like. He explained that they would be carried out on computers. The time of ground troops would soon be over, or at the very least their role would be much smaller in the future.

That made Wallander think of something, and since it was still early he looked around for the phone number and sat down at the phone.

Erik Hökberg picked up almost at once.

“How’s the investigation going?” he asked. “We’re not doing too well here. We really need to know what happened to Sonja.”

“We’re doing as much as we can.”

“But are you getting anywhere? Who killed her?”

“We don’t know that yet.”

“I don’t know how it can be so hard to find someone who murdered an innocent girl — in a substation, of all places.”

Wallander didn’t answer.

“I’m calling you because I need to ask you a question. Did Sonja know how to use a computer?”

“Of course she did. Don’t all young people use computers nowadays?”

“Was she interested in computers?”

“She mainly surfed the web, I think. She was good at it, though I don’t think she knew as much technical stuff as Emil.”

Wallander couldn’t think of anything else to ask. He felt somewhat helpless. Martinsson should have been the one asking these questions.

“You must have been thinking about what happened,” he said. “You must be asking yourself why Sonja killed the taxi driver. And then why she in turn was killed.”

Erik Hökberg’s voice was close to breaking as he answered.

“I go into her room sometimes,” he said. “I just sit in there and look around. I don’t understand it.”

“How would you describe Sonja?”

“She was strong-willed. Not always an easy person to deal with. She would have done well in life.”

Wallander thought back to the room that had seemed frozen in time. The room of a little girl, not the person her stepfather seemed to be describing.

“Didn’t she have a boyfriend?” Wallander asked.

“Not that I know of.”

“Isn’t that strange?”

“How so?”

“She was nineteen years old. And good-looking.”

“She never brought anyone home.”

“What about phone calls? Did anyone call her a lot?”

“She had her own line. She asked for it when she turned eighteen. Her phone often rang, but I don’t know who was calling.”

“Did she have an answering machine?”

“I’ve checked it. There were no calls.”

“If anyone does call and leave a message, I’d like to get the tape.”

Wallander suddenly thought of the movie poster he had seen in the closet in Sonja’s room. It was the only object, apart from her clothes, that bore witness to the teenager who lived in the room, someone who was on her way to becoming an adult woman. He searched for the title in his mind. It was The Devil’s Advocate.

“Inspector Hoglund will soon be in touch with you,” he said. “She will ask a number of questions, and if you are serious about wanting us to find Sonja’s killer you’ll have to answer in as much detail as much as possible.”

“You don’t think we’ve been helpful enough so far?” Erik Hökberg asked angrily. Wallander didn’t blame him.

“No, on the contrary, I think you’ve being extremely helpful. I won’t keep you any longer.”

He hung up. The thought of the movie poster lingered in his mind. He looked at the time and saw it was nine-thirty. He dialed the number of the Stockholm restaurant where Linda worked. A distracted man with a heavy accent answered. He promised to get Linda. It took several minutes for her to come to the phone. When she heard who it was, she was furious.

“You know you can’t call me here at this time! This is when we’re the busiest. You’ll get me in trouble.”

“I know,” Wallander said apologetically. “I just had a quick question.”

“It had better be quick.”

“It is. Have you seen a movie called The Devil’s Advocate with Al Pacino?”

“Is that what this is all about? A movie?”

“That’s it.”

“I’m hanging up.”

Now it was Wallander’s turn to get angry.

“Can’t you at least answer my question? Have you seen it?”

“Yes, I have,” she hissed.

“What is it about?”

“Oh, my God! I don’t believe this.”

“It’s about God?”

“In a way. It’s about a lawyer who turns out to be the devil.”

“Is that it?”

“Isn’t that enough? Why do you need to know this, anyway? Are you having nightmares?”

“I’m in the middle of a murder investigation. Why would a nineteen-year-old girl have a poster of this movie on her wall?”

“Probably because she thinks Al Pacino is hot. Or else maybe she worships the devil. How the hell would I know?”

“Do you have to use that language?”

“Yes.”

“Is there anything else to this movie?”

“Why don’t you see it for yourself? I’m sure it’s out on video.”

Wallander felt like an idiot. He should have thought of this himself. He could have simply rented the movie without bothering Linda.

“I’m sorry I bothered you,” he said.

Her anger had passed.

“It’s okay. But I do have to go now.”

“I know. Good-bye.”

He put the receiver down and the phone rang immediately. He lifted it again with trepidation, fearing a journalist on the other end.

At first he didn’t recognize the voice. Then he realized it was Siv Eriksson.

“I hope I’m not catching you in the middle of something,” she said.

“Not at all.”

“I’ve been thinking. I’ve been trying to find something that could help you.”

Invite me over, Wallander thought. If you really want to help me. I’m hungry and thirsty and I don’t want to sit in this damned apartment any longer.

“And did you think of anything in particular?”

“Not really. I guess his wife is probably the only one who really knew him. Or maybe his kids.”

Wallander waited to see if she would say anything else.

“I have one memory of him that stands out as unusual. It isn’t much. We only knew each other a few years.”

“Tell me.”

“It was two years ago, in October or the beginning of November. He came here one evening and was very upset. He couldn’t hide it. We had a project due, I think it was something for the county. We had a deadline, but I saw that he was very upset and I asked him about it. He said he had just seen some teenagers accost an older man who had been a little drunk. When the man tried to brush them away, they hit him. He fell down and they kicked him as he was lying there on the sidewalk.”

“Was that it?”

“Yes.”

Wallander thought about it. Tynnes Falk had reacted strongly when a person was the victim of violence. It was interesting, but he couldn’t immediately fit it into the case.

“Did he try to intervene in any way?”

“No. It just enraged him.”

“What did he say?”

“That the world was chaos. That nothing was worth it anymore.”

“What was it that wasn’t worth it?”

“I don’t know. I had a feeling he meant that mankind wasn’t worth it any longer. That our animal nature was taking over, or something like that. When I tried to ask him about it he cut me off. We never talked about it again.”

“How did you interpret his reaction?”

“I felt it was quite natural. Wouldn’t you have felt that way?” Maybe, Wallander thought. But I wonder if I would have concluded that the world is in chaos.

For some reason Wallander wanted to keep her on the line. But she was bound to see through him.

“I’m glad you called,” he said. “Please call me again if you think of anything else. I’ll probably call you myself tomorrow.”

“I’m doing some programming for a restaurant chain. I’ll be in the office all day.”

“I’m curious. What will happen with your other projects now?”

“I don’t know. I just hope I have enough of a reputation now to survive without Tynnes. If not, I’ll have to think of something else.”

“Like what?”

She laughed.

“Do you need this information for the case?”

“No, I was just asking.”

“I might take off and see the world.”

Everyone goes away, Wallander thought. In the end it will just be me and all the misfits left.

“I’ve had thoughts like that myself,” he said. “But I’m locked in, like most people.”

“I’m not locked in,” she said cheerfully. “I’m my own woman.”

After the conversation was over, Wallander thought about what she had said. I’m my own woman. She had a point. Just as Per Akeson and Sten Widen had been right in their ways.

Suddenly he felt very pleased with himself for having sent in the ad to the dating service. Even though he wasn’t expecting an answer, he had done something.

He put on his coat and went to the video store that was closest to his house, on Stora Ostergatan. When he got there, it turned out the store closed at nine o’clock on Sundays. He continued up toward the main square, stopping from time to time to look in store windows.

Where the feeling came from he couldn’t say, but suddenly he turned around. No one was there, apart from some teenagers and a security guard. He thought about what Hoglund had said about being careful.

I’m imagining things, he thought. No one is stupid enough to attack the same police officer twice in a row.

Once he got to the main square, he turned down Hamngatan and then took Osterleden home. The air was crisp. It felt good to be out.

He was back in his apartment at a quarter past ten. He found a solitary can of beer in the fridge and made some sandwiches. Then he sat down in front of the television and watched a discussion about the Swedish economy. The only thing he got out of the program was that the economy was both good and faltering. He nodded off and looked forward to finally getting an undisturbed night’s sleep.

The case was going to have to get along without him for a few hours.

He turned out the light and went to bed at half-past eleven.

He had just fallen asleep when the phone rang.

He counted out nine rings before they finally stopped. Then he pulled the cord out of the jack and waited. Any of his colleagues would try his cell phone. He hoped that wouldn’t happen.

The cell phone on his nightstand rang.

It was the patrol officer stationed outside Falk’s apartment on Apelbergsgatan. His name was Elofsson.

“I don’t know how important this is,” he said. “But a car has been by here several times in the last hour.”

“Did you see the driver?”

“That’s why I’m calling, actually. You remember the orders you gave us.

Wallander waited impatiently.

“I think he looked Asian,” Elofsson continued. “But I can’t be totally sure.”

Wallander didn’t hesitate. The peaceful night he had been looking forward to was already ruined.

“I’ll be there.”

He hung up the phone and looked at the time.

It was one minute past midnight.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Wallander turned off the Malmö highway.

Then he drove past Apelbergsgatan and parked his car on Jörgen Krabbes Way. It took him about five minutes to walk from there to the apartment building where Falk had lived. The wind was completely gone. There were no clouds in the sky and it was gradually getting chillier. October in Ystad was always a month that had trouble making up its mind.

The undercover car with Elofsson and his colleague inside was parked across the way and about half a block down from Falk’s house. When Wallander reached the car, the back door was opened for him and he climbed in. There was a pleasant smell of coffee in the air. Wallander thought of all the nights he had spent in cars like this one, fighting the urge to sleep, fighting the cold.

They said hello and exchanged some casual remarks. Elofsson’s colleague had only been in Ystad for about six months. His name was El Sayed and he had come originally from Tunisia. He was the first policeman with an immigrant background who had ever worked in Ystad. Wallander had been worried that El Sayed would be greeted with hostility and prejudice. He had no illusions about what his colleagues thought of getting a non-white recruit. His fears had been justified, as it turned out. El Sayed had to deal with his share of crude jokes and mean-spirited comments. How much of it he noticed and what he had been expecting, Wallander was still not sure. Sometimes he felt bad that he had never taken the time to invite El Sayed over for a meal. No one else had done so, either. But after a while the young man and his easygoing personality had grown on them, and he was slowly becoming part of the group.

“He came from a northerly direction,” Elofsson said. “From Malmö in toward Ystad. At least three times.”

“When was he here last?”

“Just before I called you. I tried your regular phone first. You must be a deep sleeper.”

Wallander ignored his last comment.

“Tell me in detail what happened.”

“You know how it is. It’s only when they come by the second time that you really notice them.”

“What kind of a car was it?”

“A navy blue Mazda sedan.”

“Did he slow down when he passed by?”

“I don’t know if he did the first time around, but definitely the second.”

El Sayed broke in for the first time.

“He slowed down already that first time.”

The comment clearly irritated Elofsson. Probably because he didn’t want his colleague showing him up.

“But he never stopped?”

“No.”

“Did he see you?”

“Not the first time. But probably on his second time around.”

“What happened after that?”

“He came back a third time after about twenty minutes, but he didn’t slow down.”

“He was probably just checking that you were still here. Could you see if there was more than one person in the car?”

“We talked about that. We have no way of knowing for sure, but we think it was just one person.”

“Did you check in with your colleagues at Runnerstrom Square?”

“They haven’t seen it.”

Wallander found that puzzling. If someone was keeping a check on Falk’s apartment, he should also be interested in his office.

He thought about it. The only explanation he could find was that, whoever the person in the car was, he didn’t know about the existence of the office. That is, if the officers on duty there hadn’t been sleeping. Wallander didn’t want to rule out that possibility at this point.

Elofsson turned around and gave Wallander a note with the license-plate number written on it.

“I take it you’ve already had this number checked out?”

“We tried, but the computer system was down.”

Wallander held the note up so he could read it with the help of the streetlight. MLR 331. He memorized the number.

“When did they think they could access the registers again?”

“They couldn’t say. Maybe by tomorrow morning.”

Wallander shook his head.

“We need to know this as soon as possible. When do your shifts end?”

“At six o’clock.”

“Before you head home I want you to write up a report on this and give it to Hansson or Martinsson. Then they’ll take care of it.”

“What do we do if he comes back?”

“He won’t,” Wallander said. “Not as long as he knows you’re here.”

“Should we intervene in any way in the unlikely event that he comes back?”

“No. He hasn’t committed a crime. But call me. Use my cell-phone number.”

He wished them luck, then walked back to Jörgen Krabbes Way. He drove down to Runnerström Square. Things there were not quite as bad as he imagined. Only one of the officers was asleep. They hadn’t seen any navy blue Mazdas.

“Keep a close watch,” Wallander said, giving them the license-plate number.

On his way back to his car he remembered he still had Setterkvist’s keys in his pocket. Without really knowing why, he entered the building and walked all the way up to the top floor. Before unlocking the door he pressed his ear to it and listened. He walked in and turned on the light, looking around the room in the same way that he had the first time he was there. Was there anything he hadn’t noticed that time? Something that both he and Nyberg had overlooked? He found nothing. He sat down at the computer and stared at the dark screen.

Robert Modin had talked about the number 20. Wallander had sensed intuitively that the boy was onto something. In the stream of numbers that were a nonsensical jumble to Martinsson and himself, Robert Modin had been able to see a pattern. The only thing Wallander could think of was that the 20th of October was approaching, and that the number 20 was the first part of the year 2000. But the question essentially remained unsolved. What did it mean? And did it mean anything for the investigation?

Suddenly the phone rang.

Wallander jumped. The sound rang out eerily in the room. He stared at the black phone and finally lifted the receiver on the seventh ring.

He heard static, as if it were a long distance call, and he strained to hear something on the other end. There was someone there.

Wallander said hello once, then a second time. The only thing he heard was the sound of breathing somewhere deep inside the buzz of static.

Then there was a clicking sound and the connection was lost. Wallander hung up. His heart was racing. He had heard that sound before, when he had listened to Falk’s messages.

There was someone there, he thought. Someone calling to talk to Falk. But Falk is gone. He’s dead.

Suddenly he thought of another possibility. Someone could be calling to talk to him. Had anyone seen him enter the building and walk up to Falk’s apartment?

He remembered how he had stopped and turned around on the sidewalk earlier in the evening. As if he was expecting there to be someone behind him, observing him.

His anxiety returned. Up until now, he had been able to repress the knowledge that only a few days ago someone had tried to kill him. Höglund’s words came back to him: he should take care.

He got up from the chair and walked over to the door. But he didn’t hear anything.

He walked back to the desk. Without thinking about it, he lifted the keyboard.

There was a postcard lying underneath it.

He directed the lamp over it and put on his glasses. The card was old and the color had started to fade. It was a picture of a tropical bay. There were palm trees, a pier, small fishing boats in the water. Behind the shoreline, a row of tall buildings. He turned the card over and saw it was addressed to Tynnes Falk at his Apelbergsgatan address. So much for Siv Eriksson receiving all his mail. Had she lied to him, or did she not know about this other mail? There was no message on the card, just the letter “C.” Wallander studied the postmark. The stamp was almost completely torn off, but he thought he could discern the letters / and d. That probably meant the other letters were vowels. But he couldn’t tell what they were, nor could he read the date. There was nothing printed on the postcard to say where the picture had been taken. Wallander thought back to an unhappy and chaotic trip he had once taken to the West Indies. The palm trees were the same, but the city in this picture was foreign to him.

He studied the “C” again. That was the same as the C in Falk’s diary. It must be a name. Falk had known who it was and had saved the postcard. In this bare room that contained nothing beyond the computer and a blueprint of a power substation, there had been this postcard. Wallander tucked the card into his breast pocket. Then he lifted the computer monitor to see if there was anything under that, but there was nothing. He lifted the phone. Nothing.

He looked around for another minute but finally turned out the light and left.

He was exhausted when he finally returned to Mariagatan. But before going to bed, he couldn’t resist getting out the magnifying glass and studying the postcard again. But it didn’t tell him anything more.

He went to bed shortly before two o’clock.

He fell asleep at once.

On Monday morning, Wallander made only a short stop at the station. He handed the apartment keys over to Martinsson and asked him about the car that had been seen the night before. Martinsson already had the report on his desk. Wallander didn’t say anything about the postcard. Not that he wanted to keep it to himself, but because he was in a hurry. He didn’t want to get bogged down in a long discussion. Before leaving the station he made two calls. One was to Siv Eriksson. He asked her about the number 20 and the letter C. She couldn’t think of anything offhand but told him she would be in touch if anything came to her. He told her about the postcard he had found in Falk’s office. Her exclamation of surprise was so strong that he didn’t doubt it was genuine.

Wallander told her what the postcard depicted. But she couldn’t shed light on where it came from.

“Maybe he had even more addresses,” she said.

Wallander sensed a note of disappointment in her voice, as if Falk had betrayed her.

“We’ll look into it,” he said. “You could be right about him having more houses.”

When the conversation was over, Wallander realized that the sound of her voice had cheered him up. He didn’t let himself dwell on it. He picked up the phone and made the next call, which was to Marianne Falk. He told her he was coming over in half an hour.

For the next few hours, Wallander sat in Marianne Falk’s living room and talked to her about the man she had been married to. He started at the beginning. When had they met? How had he been back then? Marianne Falk turned out to have an excellent memory. She rarely faltered or had to gather her thoughts. Wallander had brought his notebook, but he didn’t make any notes. He wasn’t planning to research what she told him; he was simply trying to get a better understanding of the man Falk had been.

According to Marianne, Falk had grown up on a farm outside Linköping. He was an only child. After graduating from high school he had done his military service and started studying in Uppsala. He hadn’t been able to decide on anything and had taken courses in everything from law to literature. But after a year he had moved to Stockholm and started studying at the business school.

That was when they had met. It had been 1972. She had been training to be a nurse during those years and had gone to a big party held by a student organization.

“Tynnes didn’t dance,” she said. “But he was there. Somehow or other we were introduced. I remember thinking that he seemed boring. It certainly wasn’t love at first sight, at least not from my side. He called a few days after that. I don’t know how he got my number. He wanted to see me again, but not for the usual walk or movie. What he suggested surprised me.”

“And what was that?”

“He wanted us to go out to Bromma and watch the airplanes taking off.”

“Did he say why?”

“He liked airplanes. We went out there, and he could tell me everything about the planes that were parked there. I thought he was a little strange. He certainly wasn’t how I had imagined the man in my life.”

Tynnes had been very persistent, according to Marianne, although she had had her doubts.

“He wasn’t pushy physically,” she said. “I think it probably took him about three months even to think of kissing me. If he hadn’t done so by that point, I would probably have tired of the whole thing. He probably sensed that and that’s why he finally kissed me. He was very shy. Or at least he pretended to be.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Tynnes was very self-confident when it came down to it. He had a reserved manner, but I think he actually looked down on most of the rest of humanity, even if he often claimed the opposite.”

A turning point in the relationship had come on a day in April or May about six months after they had met. They’d had no plans to meet that day, because Tynnes had said he had an important lecture at school to attend and she was running some errands for her mother. On her way to the train station, she was forced to stop on the side of the road because a mass of demonstrators were walking by. It was a demonstration to raise awareness of Third World issues. The signs and banners had various messages about the World Bank and Portuguese colonial oppression. Marianne had come from a stable home with solid Social Democratic values. She had not been caught up by the swelling wave of left-wing radicals, nor had she ever detected such an interest in Tynnes, even though he always seemed to have the answer whenever they discussed political issues and he clearly liked showing off his political knowledge and sophisticated understanding of political theory. When she caught sight of him among the demonstrators that day, she couldn’t believe her eyes. She had unconsciously taken a few steps back as he passed her on the street and he never saw her there.

Afterward she had asked him about it. When he realized that she had seen him in the demonstration, he became furious. It was the first time she witnessed his temper. But then he had calmed down. She never understood why it had affected him so strongly, but from that day she had known that there was a lot more to Tynnes than met the eye.

“I broke up with him that June,” she said. “Not because I had met anyone else. I just didn’t believe we were going anywhere. And his angry reaction about the demonstration had played a part in that.”

“How did he take it?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean?”

“We met at an outdoor café in Kungsträdgården. I told him straight out that I wanted to end the relationship and that I didn’t think we had a future. He listened to what I had to say and then he just got up and left.”

“And that was the end?”

“He didn’t say a single word. I remember that his face was a complete blank. When I had finished talking, he left. Though he left some money on the table for our coffees.”

“What happened after that?”

“I didn’t see him again for several years.”

“How long exactly?”

“Four years, I think.”

“What did he do during that time?”

“I don’t know for sure.”

Wallander looked at her with curiosity.

“Do you mean to say that he was gone without a trace during those four years?”

“I know it seems hard to believe, but about a week after our date in Kungsträdgården I decided I needed to talk to him again. That’s when I discovered that he had moved out of his student room without leaving a forwarding address. After a few weeks I managed to get in touch with his parents in Linköping, but they had no idea where he had gone, either. For four years he was gone, and I had no idea where he was. He had withdrawn from the business school. No one knew anything. And then he turned up again.”

“When was that?”

“That I remember exactly. It was the 2nd of August, 1977. had just accepted my first nursing position at Sabbatsberg Hospital. And there he was, waiting outside the hospital for me, carrying a big bouquet of flowers. He was smiling. I had gone through a failed relationship during those four years. When I saw him waiting there, it cheered me up. I think I was feeling pretty lost and lonely. My mother had just died.”

“You started seeing each other again?”

“He thought we should get married. He asked me just a few days later.”

“But he must have told you what he had been doing the past few years?”

“Actually, he didn’t say a word about that. He said he wouldn’t ask me about my life if I wouldn’t ask him about his. He wanted us to pretend the past four years had never happened.”

Wallander looked closely at her.

“Did he look different at all?”

“No. Not apart from having a tan.”

“He was tanned? You mean from the sun?”

“Yes. But that was the only thing. It was only by accident that I ever found out where it was that he had been all that time.”

At that moment Wallander’s cell phone rang. He hesitated, but decided to answer. It was Hansson.

“Martinsson gave me the task of identifying the car that was seen last night,” he said. “The computer registers keep crashing, but now I’ve finally been able to determine that it’s a stolen car.”

“The car, or just the license plate?”

“The plates. They were taken from a Volvo that was parked down by the Nobel Square in Malmö last week.”

“Good,” Wallander said. “Then Elofsson and El Sayed were right. That car was keeping an eye on things.”

“I’m not really sure how to proceed with this now.”

“Talk to the Malmö police about the Volvo. And send out a nationwide alert for the Mazda.”

“What crime do we suspect the driver of?”

Wallander paused.

“We suspect he has something to do with Sonja Hökberg’s murder. He may also have been the one who fired that shot at me.”

“He was the one who shot at you?”

“Or been a witness,” Wallander answered.

“Where are you right now?”

“I’m with Marianne Falk. I’ll call you later.”

She was serving him coffee from a beautiful blue-and-white coffeepot. Wallander thought he remembered seeing similar china in his parents’ home as a child.

“Why don’t you tell me about that ‘by accident’ part,” he said when she sat down again.

“It was about a month after Tynnes had turned up again in my life. He had bought a car, and he often came by to pick me up. One of the doctors I worked with at the hospital saw him come by one day. The following day he asked me if the man he had seen was Tynnes Falk. When I said yes, he told me he had met him the year before. But not in Sweden. In Africa.”

“Where in Africa?”

“In Angola. The doctor had been there doing volunteer work, just after Angola had gained independence. One day he bumped into another Swede. They met in a restaurant late at night. Tynnes took out his Swedish passport to take out the money he kept in it, and when the doctor saw that, he said hello. They only spoke briefly, but the doctor remembered him. Not least because he thought Tynnes seemed so unfriendly to a fellow Swede, as if he didn’t want to be recognized.”

“You must have asked him what he was doing there?”

“You would think so, but I never did. I meant to, but I guess it came down to the promise we had made to each other not to ask. Instead I tried to find out what he had done through other channels.”

“What other channels?”

“I called various relief organizations that had chapters in Africa. No one had any record of him. It was only when I called the Swedish Relief Agency that I got something. They said Tynnes had been in Angola for two months to help with the installation of various radio towers.”

“But he was gone for four years,” Wallander said. “Not just two months.”

She didn’t reply, perhaps lost in thought. Wallander waited.

“We married and had children,” she said finally. “Apart from that meeting in Angola, I had no idea what he had done those four years. And I never asked. It’s only now that he’s dead and we’re divorced that I’m finally starting to find out.”

She got up and left the room. When she returned she had a package in her hand. It was something wrapped in a torn plastic cloth. She lay it on the coffee table in front of Wallander.

“After he died, I went down into the basement. I knew he had a steel trunk down there. It was locked but I broke the lock. Apart from this there was nothing but dust.”

She nodded for him to open the package. Wallander flicked the plastic cloth aside. Inside was a brown leather photo album. Someone had written ANGOLA 1973–1977 on the front cover in permanent ink.

Wallander hadn’t even opened it when a thought came to him. “My education isn’t what it should be,” he said. “What’s the capital of Angola?”

“Luanda.”

Wallander nodded. He still had the postcard in his breast pocket that had the letters “l” and “d” on it.

The postcard must have been sent from Luanda. What was it that had happened there?

And who was the man or woman whose name started with C?

He leaned forward and opened the album.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The first picture was of a burned-out bus. It was lying by the side of the road, which was red, perhaps from sand or blood. The photograph had been taken from a distance. The bus looked like the body of a dead animal. A note under the picture said NORTHEAST OF HUAMBO, 1975. There was a small stain below that, similar to the one on the postcard. Wallander turned the page. A group of African women were gathered around a small water hole. The landscape looked parched. There were no shadows on the ground; the picture must have been taken at midday. None of the women was looking into the camera. The water level in the hole was low.

Wallander studied the picture carefully. Tynnes Falk, assuming he was the photographer, had chosen to capture these women on film. But it was the dried-up water hole that was the real focus of the photo. That was the story the photographer was telling, not the lives of the women. Wallander kept turning the pages. Marianne Falk sat quietly on the other side of the room. A clock ticked somewhere in the room.

Wallander kept leafing through the shots of villages, war sites, and radio towers until he came to a group photograph. In the picture were nine men, one boy, and a goat. The goat seemed to have entered the picture at random, from the right. One of the men had been trying to wave it away when the picture was taken. The boy had stared straight into the camera, laughing. Seven of the men were black, two were white. The black men looked cheerful; the white men had serious expressions on their faces. Wallander looked up from the page and asked Marianne Falk if she knew the names of any of the men. She shook her head. The place name scribbled under the picture was illegible, but it had a date: JANUARY 1976. Falk had been done with his radio towers for a long time at this point. Was he on a return trip to make sure the work had been done correctly? Was he returning at all, or had he simply stayed on in Angola after the job was done?

Wallander continued to page through the album until Marianne Falk leaned over and pointed out a picture to him. It was taken at something that looked like a party, with a small group of men in the foreground. There were only white people in the photo, their eyes red from the flash, like those of nocturnal animals. There were bottles and glasses on a table. Marianne was pointing to one man in particular with a glass in his hand. It was Falk. The young men around him were cheering and toasting each other. But Falk had his mouth shut and looked serious. He looked thin in the picture, dressed in a white shirt buttoned all the way to his throat. The other men were half-naked, flushed and sweaty. Wallander asked her again if she recognized any of them, but she shook her head.

Wallander stopped at another picture a few pages on. It was outside what looked like a whitewashed church. Tynnes Falk was standing against the wall, looking at the photographer. He was smiling for the first time in the album, and his shirt was not buttoned to the throat. Who was taking the picture? Was it “C”?

Next page. Falk was taking the pictures again. Wallander leaned in more closely to the next photo. For the first time he recognized a face from an earlier picture. It was a fairly close shot. The man was tall, thin, and tanned. His gaze was very determined, his hair shortly cropped. He looked like a Northern European, maybe German or even Russian. Wallander switched to examining the background. The picture was taken outside. There seemed to be a skyline of hills covered in thick green vegetation. But slightly closer than that, between the hills and the man, was something that looked like a large machine. Wallander thought the construction looked familiar, but it was only when he held the picture away from himself that he realized what it was. A power substation.

Here is a connection, he thought. Though I have no idea what to make of it. Falk has taken a picture of a man outside a power substation, not unlike the one where Sonja Hökberg was found dead. Wallander kept turning the pages in the hopes of finding more clues, but there was nothing of interest. There were several pages of animal pictures, clearly taken on tourist safaris in other parts of Africa.

But in the last picture, he was back in familiar territory. LUANDA, JUNE 1976. There was the thin man again with his cropped hair. He was sitting on a bench overlooking the ocean. For once Falk had managed to compose a pleasing arrangement. It was a good picture. Then the album ended. There were several empty pages remaining, but it didn’t look as if anything had been taken out. The album just stopped there, with the picture of the man staring out over the sea. In the background Wallander saw the same city as in the postcard.

Wallander leaned back in his chair. Marianne Falk gave him a searching look.

“I don’t know what these pictures tell us, but I’d like to borrow the album for a while,” he said. “We may need to make some enlargements of individual shots.”

She followed him out into the hall.

“Why do you think what he did back then was so important? It was such a long time ago.”

“Something happened out there,” Wallander said. “I don’t know what. But I think it’s something that followed him for the rest of his life.”

He put on his coat and shook her hand.

“If you like, we can send a receipt for the loan of the album.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Wallander opened the door.

“There’s one more thing,” she said.

Wallander looked at her and waited. She looked suddenly unsure of herself.

“Maybe policemen only want facts,” she said slowly. “The thing I’ve been thinking about is still very unclear even to me.”

“Right now anything may be of help.”

“I lived with Tynnes for a long time,” she said. “And I thought I knew him. What he did during those years he was gone, I don’t know. But I always knew there was something else in his life. Since he was so good-natured and treated me and the children so well, I never bothered pursuing it.”

She stopped abruptly. Wallander waited.

“Sometimes I had the feeling I had married a fanatic, a person with two lives.”

“A fanatic?”

“Sometimes he had such strange ideas about things.”

“About what, for example?”

“About life. About people. About the world. About almost anything. He could suddenly come out with the most violent accusations, not directed at any individual, as if he were sending messages into space almost.”

“He never explained himself?”

“It scared me. I didn’t dare ask him about it. He would become so filled with hate. And besides, his rages would leave him as quickly as they had come. I always had the feeling they were something he wanted to hide, something that embarrassed him.”

Wallander thought carefully.

“Do you maintain that he never got involved politically?”

“He despised politicians. I don’t even think he used to vote.”

“And, as far as you know, he had no ties to any political organizations?”

“No.”

Wallander had nothing else to ask.

“If you think of anything else, let us know.”

She promised to do so. The door closed behind him.

Wallander got in his car and placed the photo album on the passenger seat. He wondered about the man in the picture, the one in front of the power substation. The one Falk had met in a faraway land some twenty years ago.

Was he the one who had sent the postcard, the one who called himself “C”?

Wallander shook his head. He didn’t understand it.

Suddenly he felt cold. It was a chilly day. He turned up the heat and drove back to the station. As he pulled into the parking lot, the phone rang. It was Martinsson.

“Trying to crack this code is like scaling a wall,” he complained.

“Modin is doing his best to get over it, but I couldn’t tell you what he’s actually up to.”

“We just have to be patient.”

“I take it we pay for his lunch?”

“Keep the receipt,” Wallander said. “Give it to me later.”

“I’m also wondering if now would be a good time to get in touch with the National Police computer experts. There’s not really any reason to put it off, is there?”

Martinsson is right, Wallander thought. But he wanted to give Modin a little more time.

“We’ll get in touch with them in due course,” he said. “But let’s just hold off for now.”

Wallander walked into the police station. Irene told him that Gertrud had called. Wallander went into his office and called her back. Sometimes he drove out there on the weekend to visit, but it didn’t happen very often. He felt guilty about it. Gertrud, after all, was the one who had taken pity on his father in those last few difficult years. Without her, he would never have made it as long as he had. But now that his father was gone, they didn’t really have anything to talk about.

Gertrud’s sister answered the phone. She was talkative and had strong opinions on most subjects. Wallander tried to get right to the point. She went to get Gertrud. It took a long time.

When Gertrud finally picked up, it turned out that nothing was wrong. There was no reason for Wallander to have been worried.

“I just wanted to see how you were doing,” she said.

“I’m busy, but otherwise I’m doing fine.”

“It’s been a while since you were here.”

“I know. I’ll come by as soon as I have more time.”

“One day it may be too late,” she said. “At my age you never know how much more time you have.”

Gertrud was just a little over sixty. A little too young for this brand of emotional blackmail. She was taking after his father in this respect.

“I’ll be there,” he said in a friendly tone. “Just as soon as I have more time.”

Then he excused himself and said that people were waiting to talk to him. But when the conversation was over, he went out to the lunchroom to get some coffee. He bumped into Nyberg, who was drinking an unusual kind of herbal tea that was hard to find. For once he seemed well rested. He had even combed his hair, which normally stood on end.

“We have no fingerprints,” Nyberg said. “The dogs have searched everywhere. But we did do a check on the ones we found in his apartment — that is, the ones we’re assuming belong to Falk. They don’t turn up anywhere in our registers.”

“Then send them on to Interpol. By the way, do you know if that covers Angola?”

“How would I know that?”

“I was just wondering.”

Nyberg left. Wallander stole a couple of rusks from Martinsson’s private stash and returned to his room. It was already twelve o’clock. The morning had gone by quickly. The photo album lay in front of him, and he was momentarily unsure of how to proceed. He knew more about Falk now than he had a couple of hours ago, but nothing that could satisfactorily clarify a connection to Sonja Hökberg.

He pulled the phone toward him and called Höglund. No answer. Hansson wasn’t in his office, either. Martinsson was of course still busy with Robert Modin.

Wallander tried to think of what Rydberg would have done. This time it was easier to imagine his voice. Rydberg would have taken time to think. That was the most important thing a policeman could do besides gathering facts. Wallander put his feet up on the desk and shut his eyes. He went through all the points of the case in his head once more, trying all the time to keep looking back toward the events that had taken place in Angola twenty years ago. He tried various scenarios and thought them through. Lundberg’s death. Then Sonja Hökberg’s. The large power outage.

When he opened his eyes it was with the feeling of being very close to the explanation. But he couldn’t grasp it.

He was interrupted by the phone. Siv Eriksson was waiting for him in the reception area. He jumped up from his chair, ran his fingers through his hair, and went out to see her. She really was an extremely attractive woman. He asked her if she wanted to come back to his office, but she had no time. She handed him an envelope.

“Here is the list of clients you asked for.”

“I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”

“It took a little time, but it was no trouble.”

She declined his offer of a cup of coffee.

“Tynnes left some loose threads behind,” she said. “I have to attend to them.”

“But you can’t be sure he didn’t have any other projects underway as well?”

“I don’t think so. Just lately he was saying no to most new prospective clients. I know that because he asked me to deal with most of them.”

“What did you make of that at the time?”

“I thought he needed time to rest.”

“Had that ever happened before? That he turned down so many new jobs?”

“Now that you mention it, I think this was probably the only time.”

“But he offered you no explanation?”

“No.”

Wallander had no more questions. Siv Eriksson walked out the front doors to a taxi that was waiting for her. When the driver got out to open the door for her, Wallander noticed that he was wearing a black band of mourning around his arm.

He walked back to his office and opened the envelope she had given him. Inside was a long list of names of companies. Most were unknown to him — he recognized a couple of banks — but all, with one exception, were in Scania. The exception was a company in Denmark. It seemed to Wallander that the business involved the manufacture of loading cranes. Neither Sydkraft nor any utility companies were on the list, however.

After a few moments, Wallander called the Ystad branch of the North Bank. He had taken out several car loans with them on the few occasions when he had traded in his old cars for new models. He had gotten to know a man there named Winberg. He asked to speak with him, but when the telephone receptionist said his line was busy he decided to try again later. He left the station and went down to the bank in person. Winberg was busy with a client. He nodded at Wallander, who sat down and waited.

After five minutes Winberg was free.

“I’ve been expecting you,” Winberg said. “Is it time for a new car?”

Wallander was always surprised by the fact that the bank employees were so young. The first time he had applied for a loan here Winberg had personally approved it even though he didn’t look old enough to have a driver’s license.

“I’ve come about something else, actually. Something work-related. The new car will have to wait.”

Winberg’s smile waned. He looked suddenly worried.

“Has anything happened here at the bank?”

“In that case I would have spoken to your boss. What I actually need is information about your automatic teller machines.”

“I’m glad to be of assistance, though there’s some information I can’t disclose for security purposes.”

Winberg was sounding as bureaucratic as Wallander sometimes did.

“The information I’m after is of a technical nature. The first thing is very simple. How often does a machine make a mistake on a withdrawal or with an account balance?”

“Very rarely, I think, though I have no exact figures to give you.”

“Do I take it your phrase ‘very rarely’ means it almost never happens?”

Winberg nodded.

“And is there any chance that the date and time on a printed slip would be incorrect?”

“I’ve never heard of it. I imagine it must happen on occasion, but it certainly can’t be very often. Security at financial institutions has to be very high.”

“So one can usually rely on information from these machines?”

“Have you had an experience to the contrary?”

“No, but I need answers to these questions.”

Winberg opened a drawer in his desk and looked for something. Then he pulled out a comic strip that showed a man being slowly being swallowed up by an ATM.

“It never gets quite this bad,” he said smiling. “But it’s a funny image. And when it comes down to it the bank computers are of course as vulnerable as all other computerized systems.”

There it is again, Wallander said. This talk of vulnerability. He looked at the sketch and agreed it was good.

“North Bank has a client by the name of Tynnes Falk,” Wallander said. “I need printouts of his activities for the past year. That includes his cash machine withdrawals.”

“In that case you’ll have to speak to someone higher up,” Winberg said. “I’m not in charge of matters involving client privacy.”

“Who should I speak to?”

“Martin Olsson is probably the best one. He’s in an office on the second floor.”

“Can you see if he’s available?”

Winberg left his desk. Wallander feared a drawn-out bureaucratic process to get access to Olsson, but Winberg escorted him directly to the bank manager. Olsson was also surprisingly young. He promised to help Wallander. He said all he needed was an official police request. Once he found out that the request involved a deceased client, he said the widow could sign in his stead.

“He was divorced,” Wallander said.

“A paper from the police is all we need then,” Martin Olsson said.

“I promise to see to it that this is taken care of quickly on our end.”

Wallander thanked him and returned to Winberg. He had one more question.

“Can you check in your files to see if Falk kept a security box here?”

“I don’t know if that’s allowed,” Winberg said doubtfully.

“Your boss has already cleared it,” Wallander lied.

Winberg disappeared for a few minutes.

“There’s no such box registered in his name,” he said when he returned.

Wallander got up to leave, when it suddenly occurred to him he might as well take care of all his business at once.

“Let’s do the paperwork for the new car while we’re at it,” he said. “You’re right about it being time for me to get a new car.”

“How much do you want?”

Wallander thought quickly. He had no other debt right now.

“One hundred thousand should do it. If I qualify for that much.”

“No problem,” Winberg said and reached for the right form.

They were done at half past one. Wallander left the bank with the feeling of being rich. When he walked past the bookstore by the main square, he remembered the book on refinishing furniture that he should have picked up a couple of days ago. He also remembered he had no cash on him. He turned around and walked to the cash machine next to the post office. There were four people ahead of him in line: a woman with a baby carriage, two teenage girls, and an older man. Wallander watched absently as the woman put in her card, then took out the cash and the printed slip. Then he started thinking about Tynnes Falk. The two girls took out a hundred crowns, then discussed the amount printed on the slip with great energy. The older man looked around before putting in his card and punching in his secret code. He took out five hundred crowns and put the printed slip in his pocket without looking at it.

Then it was Wallander’s turn. He took out one thousand crowns and read through the account balance on the slip. Everything seemed to be in order. He crumpled up the piece of paper and tossed it into the garbage bin. Then he froze. He thought about the blackout that had cut power to most of Scania. Someone had known exactly which point to hit to affect as many areas as possible. However advanced technology became, there were always these occasional points of vulnerability. He thought about the blueprint they had found in Falk’s office. It could not have been coincidence. Just as it had not been a coincidence that the electrical relay was found in the morgue.

Suddenly he was struck by what he had seen before but not fully absorbed: the realization that none of what had happened had been coincidence.

Perhaps it was a kind of sacrifice, he thought. There was an altar in Tynnes Falk’s secret chamber, with Falk’s face as a divine being. Perhaps Sonja Hökberg wasn’t simply killed but also sacrificed. So that the point of vulnerability would become more visible. A black hood had been pulled down over Scania and everything had been brought to a halt.

The thought made him shiver. The feeling that he and his colleagues were fumbling around in the dark grew stronger.

He watched the stream of people who came up to the cash machine. If you can control the power supply you can control this machine, he thought. And God only knows what else you control. Air traffic, trains, the water supply, and electricity. All of this can be brought to its knees if you know the right place to strike.

He started walking again. Linda’s book would have to wait. He returned to the station. Irene wanted to tell him something but he waved her away and continued to his office. He threw his coat down on a chair and pulled his pad of paper toward him. He wrote out the facts again, this time from the perspective that all that had happened was part of a well-planned act of sabotage. He thought back to the perplexing fact that Falk had been involved in the release of those minks. Did that act foreshadow something even bigger? Was it a prelude to something much more sinister?

When he threw the pen down and leaned back in his chair he still was not convinced he had found the point that would truly break the case open, but it did offer new possibilities. Unfortunately Lundberg’s murder fell outside these parameters, but was that perhaps an unforeseen development, something that had not been planned out in advance? It had to be the case that Sonja Hökberg was killed in order to keep her quiet. And why cut off Falk’s fingers? To keep something from coming to light.

He kept working through his material. What happened if they assumed Lundberg was an accident, something that wasn’t part of the larger pattern?

But after only half an hour he was less convinced of this idea. It was too early. The case still didn’t hang together.

He cheered himself up with the thought that at least he had come a bit further along. He had realized there were probably more explanations and angles from which to view these events.

He had just gotten up to go to the bathroom when Höglund knocked on the door.

She got right to the point.

“You were right,” she said. “Sonja did have a boyfriend.”

“What’s his name?”

“A more pertinent question would be to ask where he is.”

“Why? Don’t we know?”

“It looks like he’s disappeared.”

Wallander looked at her. That visit to the bathroom would have to wait.

It was a quarter to three in the afternoon.

Chapter Twenty-Five

In hindsight Wallander would always feel he had made one of the biggest mistakes of his life that afternoon by sitting down and listening to what Höglund had to say. As soon as he heard that Sonja Hökberg had had a boyfriend, he should have realized that the truth was more complicated than that. What Höglund had discovered was a half-truth, and half-truths had a tendency to lead you into a mess of lies. The end result was that he didn’t see then what he should have seen, and it was a costly mistake. In his darkest hours, Wallander would always feel it had cost a person his life. And it could have led to an even greater catastrophe.

That Monday, the thirteenth of October, Höglund had taken on the task of finding out once and for all if there had been a boyfriend in Sonja Hökberg’s life. She had once more brought this topic up with Eva Persson, who had continued to deny the existence of a boyfriend in Sonja’s life. The only name she gave was Kalle Ryss, who Sonja had been with at an earlier time. Höglund wasn’t sure if Persson was telling the truth or not, but she had not been able to get any further and had finally given up.

Höglund then drove out to the hardware store where Kalle Ryss worked. They had gone out into the storeroom in order to speak undisturbed. In contrast to Eva Persson, Kalle Ryss answered simply and seemingly truthfully to all of Höglund’s questions. She had the impression that he was still very fond of Sonja, although their relationship had been over for at least a year. He missed her, mourned her death, and was frightened by what had happened. But he couldn’t shed much light on the direction her life had taken after their breakup. Even though Ystad was a small city, their paths had not crossed very often. And Kalle Ryss usually drove out to Malmö on the weekends. His new girlfriend lived there.

“But I think there was someone else,” he said suddenly. “Someone that Sonja was with.”

Kalle Ryss didn’t know much about his successor except that his name was Jonas Landahl and that he lived all alone in a big house on Snappehanegatan. He didn’t know the exact address, but it was by the corner of Friskyttegatan, on the left-hand side if you were coming from town. What Jonas Landahl did for a living he couldn’t say.

Höglund immediately drove down there and saw a beautiful modern house on the left side of the street. She walked through the gate and rang the bell. The house seemed deserted, though she couldn’t put her finger on why. No one came to the door. She rang the bell several more times, then walked to the back of the house. She banged on the back door and tried to look in through the windows. When she came back to the front she saw a man in a dressing gown and tall boots standing outside the front gate. It was a strange sight given the time of day and the cold. He explained that he lived in the house across the street and that he had seen her ringing the doorbell. He said his name was Yngve, but he didn’t give his last name.

“No one’s home,” he said firmly. “Not even the boy.”

Their conversation had been short but informative. Yngve was apparently a man who liked to keep his neighbors under surveillance. The Landahl family had been strange birds in these parts, he said, and had moved in about ten years ago. What Mr. Landahl did he didn’t know. They hadn’t even bothered to stop by and introduce themselves when they moved in. They had brought all their possessions and the boy into the house and then shut their doors. He hardly ever saw them. The boy couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen when they arrived, but they often left him alone for long stretches of time. The parents took off on long trips to God knows where. From time to time they came back, only to disappear as suddenly as they had come. Neither one of them seemed to hold down a job, but there was always money. The last time he had seen them was sometime in September. Then the boy, now a grown man, was left alone again. But a couple of days ago a taxi had come for him and taken him away.

“So the house is empty?” Höglund asked.

“There’s no one there.”

“When was it that the taxi came?”

“Last Wednesday. In the afternoon.”

Höglund imagined Yngve sitting in his kitchen with a big logbook of his neighbors’ activities in front of him. I guess it’s not unlike watching trains come and go, she thought.

“Do you remember what taxi company it was?” she asked.

“No.”

You’re lying, she thought. You know exactly what company it was; you may even remember the make of the car and the license-plate number. But you’re not going to tell me because you don’t want me to know what I’ve already figured out. That you spy on your neighbors.

She only had one more question.

“I’d be grateful if you would tell us when he turns up again.”

“What’s he done?”

“Absolutely nothing. We just need to ask him a few questions.”

“What about?”

Clearly his curiosity knew no bounds. She shook her head and he didn’t ask again, but she could see he was irritated. It was as if she had broken some unspoken rule of etiquette.

Höglund returned to the station and was lucky enough to locate the taxicab company and driver who had picked up Jonas Landahl on Snappehanegatan. The taxi driver stopped by the police station and she asked him a few questions. His name was Östensson and he was in his thirties.

She asked him about his passenger and he turned out to have a good memory.

“I picked him up shortly before two o’clock. I think his name was Jonas.”

“Did he give a last name?”

“I think I thought it was a last name. Nowadays people have such strange names.”

“And there was only one passenger?”

“Yes. A young man. He was friendly.”

“Did he have a lot of luggage?”

“Just a little bag on wheels. That was all.”

“Where did he want to go?”

“To the ferry terminal.”

“Was he going to Poland?”

“Are there any other destinations?”

“What was your general impression of him?”

“I didn’t really have one. But he was nice enough.”

“Did he seem anxious?”

“No.”

“Did he say anything?”

“He sat in the back seat and looked out the window, as far as I remember. But he gave me a tip. I remember that.”

Östensson didn’t have anything else to add. Höglund thanked him for his trouble. She decided to get a warrant to search the house on Snappehanegatan. She spoke to someone at the district attorney’s office, who sent over the paperwork she needed.

She was just on her way over to the house when the day-care center called to say that her youngest child was sick and throwing up. She drove over and took her child home, then spent the next few hours there. But then the child seemed better and her godsend of a neighbor, who often jumped in and helped her in times of need, was available to look after the little one. By the time she returned to the station, Wallander had also come back.

“Do we have keys?” he asked.

“I thought we would bring a locksmith along.”

“No need. Were the locks complicated in any way?”

“No, not really.”

“Then I’ll take care of them myself.”

“Just remember that a man in a dressing gown and green boots will be watching us from his kitchen window.”

“You’ll have to go over and keep him busy, maybe sweet-talk him. Tell him his observations have helped us and that we would be grateful if he would take a special interest in the comings and goings on his street for the next few days. And of course keep everything he finds out to himself. If there’s one curious neighbor, there could be more.”

Höglund laughed.

“He’s just the type to fall for it,” she said.

They drove to Snappehanegatan in her car. As usual he thought she drove too fast and made unnecessarily jerky movements. He was going to tell her about the photo album but couldn’t focus on anything but his hopes of not running into another car.

Wallander headed for the front door while Höglund went over to the neighbor’s house. Just as she had described, he was also struck by a feeling of desolation as he regarded the house. He was about to get the doors open when she returned.

“The dressing-gown man is now part of our undercover team,” she said.

“I take it you didn’t say we wanted the boy in connection with Sonja Hökberg?”

“Who do you take me for?”

“A talented policewoman, of course.”

Wallander opened the doors and they walked in, closing the doors behind them.

“Is anyone here?” Wallander shouted.

The words seemed to be swallowed up by the silence. There was no answer.

They proceeded slowly but deliberately through the house. It was a model of cleanliness and order. Everything stood in its place, nothing to point toward a sudden departure. There was something almost impersonal about the rooms, as if the furniture had been bought at the same time and brought in to give the rooms a lived-in look. There was a photograph of a young couple with a newborn baby on the mantelpiece. There were no other personal items. An answering machine with a blinking button stood on a table. Wallander pressed it and the messages came on. A computer company said his new modem was in. Then there was a wrong number. The person didn’t leave a name.

Then there came the message Wallander had been hoping for.

It was Sonja Hökberg’s voice.

Wallander recognized her voice immediately, although it took Höglund a few seconds to make the connection.

I’ll call you again. It’s important. I’ll call you.

Then she hung up.

Wallander found the button that saved the message. They played it again.

“So now we know,” he said. “Sonja was in contact with the boy who lived here. She didn’t even say her name.”

“Is this the call we’ve been looking for? When she escaped?”

“Probably.”

Wallander went out into the kitchen, through the laundry room and opened the door to the garage. There was a car. A dark-blue Volkswagen Golf.

“Call Nyberg,” Wallander said. “I want that car thoroughly searched.”

“Do you think it’s the one that delivered her to her death?”

“Could be. We can’t rule that out, at any rate.”

Höglund got out her phone and started the process of tracking down Nyberg. Wallander used the time to take a look around the second floor. There were four bedrooms, but only two of them looked like they had been used. One for the parents, one for the son. Wallander opened the closet in the parents’ room and looked at the clothes that hung in neat rows. He heard Höglund come up the stairs.

“Nyberg is on his way.”

Then she too looked at the clothes.

“They have good taste,” she said. “And plenty of money by the looks of it.”

Wallander found a dog collar and a little leather whip stuffed into the back of the closet.

“Perhaps their tastes run a little to the alternative side,” he said thoughtfully.

“It’s the in thing nowadays,” Höglund said knowingly. “People think you screw better if you pull a plastic bag over your head and flirt with death.”

Her choice of words startled and embarrassed Wallander, but he said nothing.

They continued into the boy’s room. It was unexpectedly bare. There was nothing on the walls or the bed. There was a computer on a large desk.

“I’ll ask Martinsson to take a look at this,” Wallander said.

“Do you want me to start it up for you?”

“No, let’s hold off.”

They went back downstairs. Wallander searched through the slips of paper stuffed into a kitchen drawer until he found what he was looking for.

“I don’t know if you noticed this or not,” he said, “but there was no name on the front door. That’s a little unusual. But here at least is some junk mail addressed to Harald Landahl, Jonas’s father.”

“Are we going to put out a search for him? I mean the boy.”

“No, not just yet. We need a little more information first.”

“Was he the one who killed her?”

“We don’t know. But his departure can be interpreted as an attempt to flee.”

They went through more drawers while they waited for Nyberg. Höglund found a number of photographs of what looked to be a newly built house in Corsica.

“Is that where they keep going?”

“It’s not impossible.”

“Where do they get their money?”

“The son is still the main focus of our investigation.”

The doorbell rang. It was Nyberg and his team of technicians. Wallander led them out to the garage.

“Concentrate on fingerprints,” he said. “They might correspond with some we’ve found in other places. On Sonja Hökberg’s handbag, for example. Or in the office in Runnerström Square. Also, look for signs placing it at the power substation. Or that Sonja Hökberg has been in it.”

“In that case we’ll start with the tires,” Nyberg said. “That will be the fastest. You remember we had one set of tire marks out there we couldn’t account for.”

Wallander waited, and it only took Nyberg ten minutes to give him the answer he had been hoping for.

“This is the car,” Nyberg said after having compared the tread with pictures taken of the crime scene.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course not. There are thousands of tires out there that are almost identical. But if you look at this back left tire you’ll see that it’s low on air and is also worn on the inside since the tires haven’t been balanced properly. That dramatically increases our chances of being right.”

“So then you are sure.”

“As sure as I can be without total certainty.”

Wallander left the garage. Höglund was busy with the living room. He went to the kitchen. Am I doing the right thing? he thought. Should I send out a description of him right now? A sudden sense of anxiety drove him back upstairs to the boy’s bedroom. He sat down at the desk and looked around. Then he got up and went over to the closet. There was nothing that caught his eye. He stood on tiptoe and felt around on the upper shelves. Nothing. He returned to the desk and looked at the computer. Impulsively he lifted the keyboard but there was nothing underneath. He paused before going to the top of the stairs and calling out to Höglund. They went back into the boy’s bedroom together and Wallander pointed to the computer.

“Do you want me to start it up now?”

He nodded.

“So we’re not waiting for Martinsson?”

There was no attempt to hide the irony in her voice. Perhaps she had been hurt by his earlier insistence that they wait for their colleague. But right now he didn’t have time to think about that. How many times had he felt overlooked or humiliated during his years as a policeman? By other police officers, criminals, prosecutors, and journalists, and not least by those who were usually referred to as “members of the public.”

Höglund sat down at the computer and started it. It made a little noise and the screen slowly came to life. She clicked open the hard drive and various icons emerged.

“What is it you want me to look for?”

“I don’t know.”

She chose an icon at random and double-clicked on it. In contrast to Falk’s computer, this one didn’t put up any resistance. It dutifully opened the file, the only problem being that the file was completely empty.

Wallander put on his glasses and leaned over her shoulder.

“Try the one called ‘Correspondence,’” he said.

She clicked on the icon, but the same thing happened. There was nothing there.

“What does it mean?” he asked.

“That it’s empty.”

“Or it’s been emptied. Keep going.”

She tried file after file but kept getting the same result.

“It’s strange,” she said. “There really isn’t anything here at all.” Wallander looked around to see if he could find any diskettes. But he couldn’t find anything.

Höglund proceeded to the icon that held the information about computer activity.

“The last activity occurred on the ninth of October,” she announced.

“That was last Thursday.”

They looked questioningly at each other.

“The day after he went to Poland?”

“If the neighborhood spy is to be believed, which I actually think he is.”

Wallander sat down.

“Explain it to me.”

“Well, as far as I can see, that leaves us with two explanations. Either he came back, or else someone else has been here.”

“And the person who was here could have emptied the computer of all content?”

“Quite easily, considering there were no security barriers.”

Wallander tried to work with the little computer knowledge he had managed to absorb.

“Could this person also have removed the traces of such an existing barrier?”

“Yes, if they had already bypassed it themselves.”

“And then emptied the computer at the same time?”

“There would always be prints left behind,” she said thoughtfully.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s something Martinsson explained to me.”

“Tell me.”

“You can try to understand it by comparing a computer to a house that has been emptied of its furniture. There are always a few traces left behind. There might be scratches on the hardwood floors, or perhaps there are patches of light and dark left from where the furniture once was.”

“Like a wall after the paintings have been taken down,” Wallander said. “There are lighter patches where they used to be.”

“Martinsson used the example of a cellar. Somewhere deep inside the computer there’s a space where everything that is supposed to be erased continues to live on. That means that until a hard drive has been destroyed, it is theoretically possible to reconstruct everything that was once in it.”

Wallander shook his head.

“I understand what you’re saying, though I don’t understand how it would be possible,” he said. “But what interests me most right now is the fact that someone used the computer on the ninth.”

Höglund turned back to the monitor.

“Let me just check the games that are on here,” she said and started double-clicking on the icons she hadn’t yet touched.

“That’s funny,” she mumbled. “I’ve never heard of this game. ‘Jacob’s Marsh’.”

When she finished, she turned off the computer.

“There’s nothing there. I just wonder why the icons were left on the desktop.”

They searched the room thoroughly, hoping to find some diskettes, but had no luck. Wallander was intuitively convinced that getting to the bottom of the use of the computer on the ninth was a key to unlocking the entire case. Someone had deliberately cleaned out the computer, and the only question was whether it was Jonas Landahl or someone else.

They finally gave up looking and went downstairs. Wallander asked Nyberg to go through the house with a fine-tooth comb after he was done with the car. Looking for diskettes would be his highest priority.

Höglund was on the phone with Martinsson when Wallander came back into the kitchen. She handed him the receiver.

“How is it going over there?”

“Robert Modin has a lot of energy, I’ll give him that much,” Martinsson said. “He took a lunch break and had a strange kind of quiche, but he was ready to get back to work again before I was even ready for coffee.”

“Have there been any developments?”

“He keeps insisting that the number twenty is significant. It’s returned in several different contexts. But he’s not over the wall yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s his own terminology. He hasn’t cracked the code yet, though he’s sure now it consists of two words. Or possibly a number and a word, though I’m not sure how he knows that.”

Wallander told him briefly what they were doing. When the conversation was over he asked Höglund to go back to the neighbor and confirm the date of Jonas Landahl’s departure. He also wanted her to ask if anyone else had been seen on the ninth.

She left, and Wallander sat down on the sofa to think. But he had not come up with anything when she returned twenty minutes later.

“It’s pretty disturbing, really,” she said. “He keeps a record of these events. Is that all one has to look forward to in retirement? In any case, he’s absolutely sure the boy left on Wednesday.”

“What about the ninth?”

“He didn’t see anyone. But of course not even he spends every moment at the kitchen window.”

“So that doesn’t tell us anything,” Wallander said. “It could as easily have been the boy as anyone else.”

It was five o’clock. Höglund left to pick up her children. She offered to come back later that night, but Wallander told her to stay at home. He would call her if anything else developed.

He went to the boy’s room for a third time, and knelt to peer under the bed. Höglund had already checked it but he wanted to see with his own eyes if there was anything there.

Then he lay down on the bed.

Suppose he’s hidden something important in this room, Wallander thought. Something he wants to be able to check on when he first wakes up in the morning and when he’s going to bed at night. Wallander let his gaze travel along the walls of the room. Nothing. He was about to sit up when he saw that one of the bookcases next to the closet leaned slightly in toward the wall. It was very apparent from the vantage point of the bed. He sat up, and the angle was no longer visible. He walked over to the bookcase and bent down. Someone had placed a small shim under each side, creating a sliver of space underneath. He slid his fingers in and immediately felt that there was something there. He coaxed out the object and knew what it was before he had a chance to look at it. A diskette. He had his cell phone out and was dialing a number even before he made it to the desk. Martinsson answered immediately. Wallander explained where he was and what he had found. Martinsson wrote down the address and said he was on his way. Robert Modin would have to be left unsupervised for a short while.

Martinsson was there within fifteen minutes. He started the computer and inserted the diskette. Wallander leaned forward to read the name of the diskette. JACOB’S MARSH. It reminded him of something Höglund had said about the games, and he felt a rush of disappointment. Martinsson double-clicked on it. There was only one file on the diskette, and it had last been opened on the twenty-ninth of September. Martinsson double-clicked on the file.

They were both startled by the text that came up on the screen.

“What does that mean?” Martinsson asked.

“I don’t know,” Wallander said. “But we have another connection. This time between Jonas Landahl and Falk.”

Martinsson stared at him uncomprehendingly.

“Don’t you remember? Falk was involved in that animal-release heist a while back.”

Now Martinsson remembered.

“I wonder if Jonas Landahl was involved in that job. He might have been one of the people who got away.”

Martinsson was still confused.

“So this is all about minks?”

“No,” Wallander said. “I don’t think so. I think we need to find Jonas Landahl as soon as possible.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

It was early dawn on the fourteenth of October, and Carter had just been forced to make an important decision. He had opened his eyes in the dark and listened to the noise of the air conditioning unit. He heard that it was almost time to clean out the mechanism inside. There was a low hum that shouldn’t have been there in the monotone gush of cold air from the machine. He had stood up, shaken out his slippers since there could be insects hiding inside, put on his robe, and gone down into the kitchen. Carter helped himself to a bottle of the previously boiled water that had spent the night inside the refrigerator. He slowly drank two large glasses, then went upstairs to his study and sat down in front of the computer. It was never turned off. It was connected to a large reserve battery in case of a blackout, and it was also hooked up to a surge protector that managed the constant ebbs and flows of power from the electrical outlet.

He had a message from Fu Cheng. He read it carefully.

Afterward he sat motionless in his chair for a while.

The news was not good, not good at all. Cheng had done what he had told him to do, but the police were apparently still trying to break into Falk’s computer. Carter was convinced that they would never be able to break the codes, and even if they did they would never understand what they were looking at. But there was something in the message that worried him, and it was the fact that the police had brought in a young man to help them with their task.

Carter had a healthy respect for young men with glasses who spent a great deal of their time in front of computers. He and Falk had often spoken about these modern-day geniuses. They could break into secret networks, read through and even interpret the most complicated electronic programs.

Cheng had written that he believed Modin to be this kind of young man. Cheng pointed out that Swedish hackers had broken into the defense systems of other countries on more than one occasion.

He could be one of the dangerous ones, Carter thought. A modern-day heretic. Someone who won’t leave our systems and our secrets alone. In an earlier age, a person like Modin would have been burned at the stake.

Carter didn’t like it, as little as he had liked any of the developments after Falk’s death. Falk had really left him in the lurch. Now Carter was forced to clean up around him, and he didn’t have much time to weigh each decision carefully. Haste had led to mistakes, such as removing Falk’s body. Maybe it hadn’t even been necessary to kill that young woman? But she could have talked. And the police didn’t seem to be losing interest.

Carter had seen this kind of behavior before — a person determined to follow a set of tracks leading to the wounded animal hiding in the bush.

After only a few days he realized it was the policeman called Wallander who was tracking them. Cheng’s analysis had been very clear on the matter. That’s why they had tried to take him out. But they had failed, and now the man was still tenaciously following their tracks.

Carter got up and walked over to the window. The city had not yet started to wake up. The African night was full of scents and sounds. Cheng was dependable. He was capable of a fanatic loyalty that Carter and Falk had once decided might be useful. The question now was only if that was enough.

He sat down at the computer and started typing. It took a little less than half an hour to list all the acts he felt constituted the alternatives. Then he cleared his mind of any emotion that would distract him from the best possible course of action.

He arrived at his decision in only a few minutes. After all, Carter had discovered Wallander’s weakness, one that opened a possibility of getting to him.

Every person has his secret, Carter thought. Even this Wallander. Secrets and weaknesses.

He started typing again and heard banging and clattering starting to come from the kitchen before he was done. He read through his message three times before he was completely satisfied and sent it off.

Carter went down to the dining room and ate his breakfast. Every morning, he tried to tell if Celine was pregnant again. He had decided to fire her the next time it happened. He handed her the shopping list he had made the night before. He gave her the money, then unlocked the two front doors. Altogether there were sixteen different locks to unlock every morning.

Celine left the house. The city had begun to stir. But this house, built by a Portuguese doctor, had thick walls. When Carter returned to his study he had the feeling that he was surrounded by silence, the silence that always existed in the middle of the African din. There was a blinking light on his computer. He had mail.

It was now only a week before the electronic tidal wave would sweep the world.

Shortly after seven o’clock on Monday evening it was as if someone had let the air out of Martinsson and Wallander. That was after they had left the house in Snappehanegatan and returned to the police station.

They had tried to understand what must have happened. Had Jonas Landahl returned to erase all the files on his computer? In that case, why had he left the diskette behind? Was the content of the diskette unimportant? But why then had it been hidden with such care? There were many questions, but no good answers. Martinsson suggested carefully that the perplexing message — RELEASE THE MINKS — was a deliberate attempt to lead them astray. But what direction was that? Wallander wondered glumly. There seemed to be no direction that was any better than the rest.

They discussed whether or not they should put out an alert for Jonas Landahl. Wallander hesitated, since they had no real reason to bring him in — at least not until Nyberg had been able to examine the house. Martinsson did not agree with him, and it was at about this time that they were both overtaken by exhaustion. Wallander felt guilty because he couldn’t steer the investigation in the right direction. He suspected that Martinsson silently agreed with him on this point.

Robert Modin had been sent home, though he had been eager to continue working all night. Martinsson started checking the police registers for the name “Jonas Landahl.” He had focused on descriptions of animal-rights activists, but had found nothing. He had turned off his computer and joined Wallander, who was sitting in front of a plastic mug of cold coffee in the lunchroom.

They had decided to call it a day. Wallander remained in the lunchroom for a while, too tired to think, too tired to go home. The last thing he did was try to get in touch with Hansson. Someone finally told him that Hansson had gone to Växjö in the afternoon.

Wallander called Nyberg, but there was nothing new to report. The technicians were still working on the car.

On his way home, Wallander stopped at the grocery store. When he was in line to pay he realized he had left his wallet on his desk at work. The checkout clerk recognized him and let him buy his food on credit. The first thing Wallander did when he got home was write a note to himself in capital letters reminding him to pay his bill the following day. He put the note on his doormat so he would be unable to miss it as he was leaving. Then he cooked up a spaghetti dinner and ate it in front of the TV. For once the food was quite good. He flipped through the channels and finally decided on a movie. But it was already halfway through when he started, and he never got into it. Then he reminded himself that there was another movie he needed to see. The one with Al Pacino.

He went to bed at eleven o’clock and unplugged the phone. There was no wind, and the streetlamp outside the window was completely still. It didn’t take long for him to fall asleep.

On Tuesday morning he woke up shortly before six o’clock, feeling well rested. He had dreamed of his father. And about Sten Widen. They had been in a strange landscape filled with rocks. In the dream Wallander had been afraid he was about to lose sight of them. Even I can interpret this dream, he thought. I’m still as afraid of abandonment as a young child.

The cell phone rang. It was Nyberg. As usual, he got straight to the point. He always assumed the person he was calling was fully awake, regardless of what time it was. But that never stopped him from complaining about other people calling him at all hours.

“I’ve just finished work on the garage at Snappehanegatan,” he said. “I found something in the back seat of the car that I didn’t see at first.”

“What was it?”

“A piece of gum. It says ‘Spearmint.”’

“Was it stuck to the back seat?”

“It was an unopened stick. If it had been a used piece of gum I would have found it much earlier.”

Wallander was already out of bed and halfway across the cold floor to the bathroom.

“Good,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.”

Half an hour later he had showered and dressed and was on his way to the station. His morning coffee would have to wait until he got to the office. He had planned to walk to work, but changed his mind at the last minute and took the car. He tried to quell his guilty conscience. The first person he looked for when he got in was Irene. But she wasn’t in yet. If Ebba was still working, she would already be here, Wallander thought. Even though she didn’t officially start until seven. But she would have sensed intuitively that I needed to speak to her. He realized he was being unfair to Irene. No one could compare to Ebba. He went to get a cup of coffee in the meantime. He spoke to some of the traffic police officers, who were complaining about speeding drivers and the rising incidence of driving under the influence. There was going to be a big crackdown today. Wallander listened absently, reflecting that policemen had a tendency to be whiny. He walked back to the reception area just as Irene was removing her coat and scarf.

“Do you remember me borrowing some gum from you the other day?”

“I don’t think ‘borrow’ is the right word in that context. I gave it to you, or rather, to that girl.”

“What kind was it?”

“A regular brand. ‘Spearmint,’ I think.”

Wallander nodded.

“Was that it?” Irene asked, surprised.

Wallander returned to his office, walking so quickly that he almost spilled his coffee. He was in a hurry to confirm this trail of thought. He called Höglund at home and heard a child wail in the background when she picked up.

“I want you to do me a favor,” he said. “I want you to ask Eva Persson what kind of gum she chews. I also want you to ask if she used to give any to Sonja.”

“Why is this so important?”

“I’ll explain it to you when you get down here.”

She called him back after ten minutes. There was still a lot of noise in the background.

“I talked to her mother. She said Eva chewed different kinds of gum. I doubt she would lie about something like this.”

“So she kept an eye on what kind of gum her daughter bought?”

“Mothers know a lot about their daughters,” she said.

“Or think they do.”

“In some cases.”

“What about Sonja?”

“I think we can assume Eva sometimes shared her gum with Sonja.” Wallander smacked his lips.

“Why in God’s name is this so important?”

“I’ll let you know when you get down here.”

“Everything is such a mess over here,” she sighed. “For some reason Tuesday mornings are the worst.”

Wallander hung up. Every morning is the worst, he thought. Without fail. At least all those mornings that you wake up at five in the morning and can’t fall back to sleep.

He walked over to Martinsson’s office. There was no one there. He was probably with Modin over at Runnerström Square. Hansson wasn’t in either. Maybe he wasn’t back yet from what was probably a completely unnecessary trip to Växjö.

Wallander sat down at his desk and tried to go through the latest findings on his own. They were now almost completely sure that the blue car over at Snappehanegatan was the same vehicle that had taken Sonja Hökberg to the power substation. Jonas Landahl had probably been the driver, letting her off to be killed, then preparing to take the ferry to Poland.

There were many gaps. Jonas Landahl may not have been the driver and he may not have been Sonja’s killer, but he was definitely under suspicion. They needed to speak to him as soon as possible.

The computer was an even bigger mystery. If Jonas Landahl had not erased what was on it, then someone else had. And how could they account for the hidden diskette?

Wallander tried to come up with a plausible theory. After a few minutes he came up with a third alternative. Jonas Landahl did erase everything on his computer, but someone else also came in later to make sure he had done so.

Wallander turned to a fresh page on his pad of paper and wrote a list of names.

There was a connection among all of these people. But there was still no good motive for any of the crimes. We’re still looking for common ground, Wallander thought. We haven’t found it yet.

He was interrupted in his thoughts by Martinsson.

“Robert Modin has already started his day,” he said. “He demanded to be picked up at six o’clock. He’s a strange bird. He brought his own food with him today. Some funny-looking herbal teas and even funnier rusks. Made from organic ingredients in Bornholm. He also brought a Walkman with him, claiming he works best when he listens to music. I looked at his tapes. Here are the names.”

Martinsson took a slip of paper out of his pocket.

“Handel’s Messiah, Verdi’s Requiem. What does that tell you?”

“That Modin has good taste in music.”

Wallander told Martinsson about the phone calls with Nyberg and Höglund and the fact that they could now be fairly sure that Sonja had been driven in Landahl’s car.

“It may not have been her last car ride, though,” Martinsson said.

“I think for now we’ll assume it was. We’ll also assume that that’s why Landahl decided to get away.”

“So we put out an alert for him?”

“Yes. Can you arrange it with the DA’s office?”

Martinsson made a face.

“Can’t Hansson take care of it?”

“He’s not in yet.”

“Where the hell is he?”

“Someone claimed he went up to Växjö.”

“Why?”

“That’s where Eva Persson’s alcoholic father is supposed to be.”

“And is that really a priority? Speaking to her father?”

Wallander shrugged.

“I can’t be the only authority on what to prioritize.”

Martinsson got up.

“I’ll talk to Viktorsson, and I’ll also see what I can dig up on Landahl. As long as the computers are up.”

Wallander detained him for a moment.

“What do we know about these groups?” he asked. “These — what do you call them — eco-terrorists?”

“Hansson compares them to motorcycle gangs, since they break into labs and sabotage animal experiments.”

“Is that fair?”

“When was Hansson ever fair?”

“I thought most of these groups espoused nonviolence. Isn’t it called civil disobedience? Has that gone out of style?”

“I think most of the time they’re nonviolent,” Martinsson said.

“And Falk was involved in this.”

“Don’t forget that he may not have been murdered at all.”

“But Sonja Hökberg was, and so was Lundberg,” Wallander said.

“Doesn’t that just tell us that we don’t have a clue about what’s going on?”

“What about Robert Modin — do you think he’s going to get anywhere?”

“It’s hard to say. I hope so.”

“And he claims the number twenty is important?”

“Yes. He’s sure of that now. I only understand about half of what he says, but he’s very convincing.”

Wallander looked over at his calendar.

“It’s the fourteenth of October today. That means we have a week left.”

“If the number twenty refers to a date. We don’t know that.”

Wallander thought of something else.

“Have Sydkraft come up with anything else? They must have finished their internal investigation by now. How could the break-in occur? Why was the gate broken and not the inner door?”

“Hansson is in charge of that. He said that Sydkraft have taken the whole thing very seriously and he expects to see a number of heads roll.”

“I wonder if we have taken it seriously enough,” Wallander said thoughtfully. “How did Falk manage to get hold of the blueprint? And why?”

“Everything is so complicated,” Martinsson complained. “Naturally we can’t dismiss the idea of sabotage. The step from releasing minks to cutting power is perhaps not so great. Not if someone is a fanatic.”

Wallander felt his anxiety tighten its grip.

“This thing with the number twenty worries me,” he said. “What if it really does stand for the twentieth of October? What will happen then?”

“It worries me, too,” Martinsson said. “But I don’t have any answers for you.”

Neither had anything more to say.

Martinsson left the room, and Wallander devoted the next couple of hours to catching up on paperwork and trying to make a dent in the piles that had built up on his desk. The whole time, he was searching for a clue that he might have overlooked. But he didn’t think of anything new.

Later that afternoon they had a meeting. Martinsson had talked to Viktorsson, and Jonas Landahl was now officially wanted by the police. The alert had gone out internationally as well. The Polish authorities had responded very quickly and confirmed that Jonas Landahl had entered the country on the day that his neighbor saw him leave Snappehanegatan in a taxi. They had no confirmation as yet of any departure, but something told Wallander he wasn’t in Poland anymore.

Nyberg had gone over the car again and sent a number of plastic bags with fiber and hair samples to the lab for further analysis. They would not be able to confirm the fact that Sonja had been in the car until the results came back. The question of the car sparked a heated discussion between Martinsson and Höglund. She maintained that if the tests came back positive Landahl must have been the person who drove Sonja to the power substation. But Martinsson argued that if Sonja Hökberg and Jonas Landahl had been dating, it would have been natural for her to have been in his car, so that wouldn’t prove anything.

Wallander waited while they argued back and forth. Neither one of them was right. Both were tired. Finally the discussion died down on its own. Hansson talked about his trip to Växjö, which had been as meaningless as Wallander had suspected. He had also taken a wrong turn on the highway that had delayed him even further. When he finally located Eva Persson’s father, the man turned out to be heavily intoxicated and had not been able to give Hansson any interesting information. He had burst into tears each time he said his daughter’s name, and had talked despondently of her future. Hansson had tried to get away as quickly as he could.

There was no information as yet on the Mercedes van, but Wallander had received a fax from the American Express office in Hong Kong confirming that there was no one by the name of Fu Cheng at the address indicated on the card. Robert Modin was still wrestling with Falk’s computer. After a long and, in Wallander’s opinion, unnecessary discussion they decided to wait yet another day before bringing in the computer experts from the National Police.

At six o’clock they were exhausted. Wallander looked at the pale and tired faces around him. He knew that the only thing he could do now was let everyone go home. They decided to meet again at eight the following morning. Wallander kept working after the meeting was over, but at half past eight even he went home. He ate the leftovers of his spaghetti dinner and lay down on his bed to read a book. It was an account of Napoleon’s various military campaigns, and it was incredibly boring. He soon fell asleep with the book draped over his face.

The phone rang. At first he didn’t know where he was or what time it was. He answered. It was someone from the station.

“One of the ferries approaching Ystad has just contacted us,” said the policeman on night duty.

“What’s happened?”

“One of the axles for the propellers started malfunctioning, and when they located the problem they called us immediately.”

“Yes?”

“There was a dead body down in the engine room.”

Wallander caught his breath.

“Where’s the ferry?”

“It’s only half an hour from land.”

“I’m coming right down.”

“Should I notify anyone else?”

Wallander thought for a moment.

“Call Martinsson and Hansson. And Nyberg. We’ll meet at the terminal.”

“Anything else?”

“Call Chief Holgersson.”

“She’s at a police conference in Copenhagen.”

“I don’t care. Call her.”

“What should I tell her?”

“That a suspected murderer is on his way back from Poland. But that unfortunately he’s coming back dead.”

They ended the conversation. Wallander knew he didn’t need to spend any more time thinking about where Jonas Landahl was.

Twenty minutes later he met his colleagues by the ferry terminal and waited for the large ship to dock.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

As Wallander was climbing down the steep stairs into the engine room, he had a strong feeling that he was descending into an inferno. Even though the ferry was securely docked and the noise from below had died down to an even hum, he felt as though there was still a hell down there waiting for him. Two pale engineers and an equally pale first mate had greeted them and escorted them to the engine room. They had managed to communicate that the body waiting for them in the oily water below had been mutilated beyond the point of recognition. Someone, perhaps Martinsson, said the pathologist was on her way. A fire truck with rescue personnel was waiting outside.

Despite his misgivings, Wallander wanted to be the first to go down. Martinsson was glad to be excused. Hansson had still not arrived. Wallander asked Martinsson to take charge of documenting the events surrounding the discovery of the body and asked him to send Hansson down as soon as he arrived.

Then Wallander set off downstairs, closely followed by Nyberg. The technician who had first discovered the body accompanied them. Once they had reached the bottom, he directed them to the stern. Wallander was astonished by the size of the room. Finally the technician stopped at a ladder and pointed down into the abyss. Wallander started climbing down. While they were still on the ladder, Nyberg stepped on his hand. Wallander cursed from the pain and almost lost his grip but managed to catch himself. Then they made it all the way down and there, under one of the two large, oily propeller axles, was the body.

The engineers had not been exaggerating. Wallander had the distinct impression that what he was looking at was no longer human. It was as if a newly-slaughtered animal carcass had been thrown in there. Nyberg groaned. Wallander thought he hissed something about his retirement. Wallander was surprised that he didn’t feel the slightest bit queasy. He had been forced to endure so many terrible sights during his career. Car accidents. The remains of people who had died at home and not been discovered for months. But this was among the worst he had ever seen. There had been a picture of Jonas Landahl in his bedroom. A young man with a very normal appearance. Now Wallander tried to gauge if the body in front of him belonged to the person he had assumed it must be. But the face was almost completely gone. In its place was a bloody lump without any features.

The boy in the picture had been blond. The head in front of him, almost completely severed from the body, had a few tufts of hair remaining that were not matted with oil. They looked light. That was enough for Wallander, although it didn’t necessarily prove anything. He stepped aside so Nyberg could take a closer look. Then Susann Bexell arrived, accompanied by two rescue workers.

“How in the hell did he end up down here?” Nyberg asked.

Even though the engine was idling at low speed, he had to shout to make himself heard. Wallander shook his head without answering. Then he felt an almost violent urge to get out of there, to leave this hell as soon as possible. If only to be able to think clearly. He left Nyberg, the pathologist, and the rescue workers and climbed the ladder. He made it all the way up to the deck, walked outside, and took some deep breaths. Martinsson turned up from somewhere and asked him how it was.

“Worse than you can imagine.”

“Is it Landahl?”

They hadn’t talked openly about this possibility until now. But clearly it had been in Martinsson’s mind, too.

“It was too hard to tell,” Wallander said. “But I’m sure it was him.”

Then he tried to muster his organizational skills. Martinsson had found out that the ferry was not scheduled to leave again until the following morning. That would give them enough time to finish the forensic investigation and remove the body.

“I’ve already asked for a list of passengers,” Martinsson said. “But there was no record of a Jonas Landahl, at least for this trip.”

“But he was on board today,” Wallander said firmly. “Whether or not he appears on the list. He may have used a different name. We’ll need a printout of that list and all the names of the crew. Then we’ll see if there isn’t some name that looks familiar or like a version of Landahl.”

“You’re ruling out the possibility that it was an accident?”

“Yes,” Wallander said. “It’s about as much of an accident as what happened to Sonja Hökberg. And it’s the same people.”

Then he asked if Hansson had arrived. Martinsson said he was questioning the engineers.

They went back inside. The ferry seemed completely deserted. A small cleaning crew was working on the broad staircase that connected the different levels of the ship. Wallander directed Martinsson to the large cafeteria. There wasn’t a single person to be seen, but there were noises coming from the kitchen. Through the windows they saw the lights of Ystad.

“See if you can get hold of some coffee,” he said. “We need to talk.” Martinsson walked off in the direction of the kitchen. Wallander sat down at a table. What did it mean that Jonas Landahl was dead? He was slowly coming up with two different theories that he wanted to discuss with Martinsson.

Suddenly a man in a uniform appeared by his side.

“Why haven’t you disembarked?”

Wallander looked at the man, who had a long beard and a ruddy complexion. There were several yellow stripes on his epaulettes. This is a large ferry, he thought. Not everyone knows what happened down in the engine room.

“I’m a police officer,” Wallander said. “Who are you?”

“I’m third mate on this ship.”

“That’s good,” Wallander said. “Go talk to your captain or first mate and they’ll tell you why I’m here.”

The man hesitated. But then he seemed to decide that Wallander was probably telling the truth and was not a lingering passenger that had to be dealt with. He disappeared. Martinsson came out of the kitchen with a tray.

“They were eating,” he said when he sat down. “They hadn’t heard anything about what happened, though they had of course noticed that the ferry cut back on power for part of the trip.”

“The third mate came by,” Wallander said. “He didn’t know anything, either.”

“Have we made a big mistake?” Martinsson asked.

“In what way?”

“Shouldn’t we have detained everyone for a while? At least until we could have checked the names on the list and all the cars?”

Martinsson was right, but at the same time, that kind of an operation would have required more manpower than they could have mustered at such short notice. Wallander also doubted that they would have had any results.

“Maybe,” he said. “But we should focus on the situation as is.”

“I dreamed about going to sea when I was younger,” Martinsson said.

“I did too,” Wallander said. “Doesn’t everyone?”

Then he dove right in.

“We have to come up with an interpretation,” he said. “We had begun to suspect that Jonas Landahl was the one who drove Sonja Hökberg to the power substation and then killed her. We had assumed that that was why he later fled from Snappehanegatan. Now he himself is killed. The question is simply how this changes the picture.”

“You still maintain it couldn’t be an accident?”

“Is that what you think it was?”

Martinsson shifted slightly.

“As I see it, there are two conclusions that can be drawn,” Wallander continued. “The first is that Landahl really did kill Sonja for some reason that we still don’t know, although we suspect it has to do with keeping something quiet. Afterward Landahl takes off to Poland. Whether he is driven by panic or following some deliberate plan, we don’t know. But then he is killed, perhaps as a kind of revenge. Perhaps because he has become a liability for someone else in turn.”

Wallander paused, but Martinsson didn’t say anything. Wallander continued.

“The other possibility is that an unknown person killed both Sonja Hökberg and now Landahl.”

“How does that account for Landahl’s quick getaway?”

“When he found out what happened to Sonja, he was scared. He fled, but someone caught up with him.”

Martinsson nodded. It seemed to Wallander that they were thinking along the same tracks now.

“Sabotage and death,” Martinsson said. “Hökberg’s body is used to cause a huge blackout in Scania. Then Landahl’s body is thrown down into the propeller axles of a huge ferry.”

“Do you remember what we talked about a little while ago?” Wallander asked. “We put it this way: first the minks were released, then there was the blackout, and now a ferry incident. What’s next?”

Martinsson shook his head despondently.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “I can understand releasing the minks, that a group of animal-rights activists would plan and execute that task. I can perhaps even see some logic to the blackout — perhaps someone wants to demonstrate the enormous weaknesses built into our society. But what would be the point of causing chaos down in the engine room of a ferry?”

“It’s like a game of dominoes. If one piece falls, the rest follow. And the first piece to fall was Falk.”

“What about Lundberg’s murder? How do you fit that in?”

“That’s just the problem. I can’t get it to fit, and therefore I’ve started thinking something else.”

“That Lundberg’s death is incidental to the rest of the events?”

Wallander nodded. Martinsson could think quickly when he tried.

“Do you mean that we should separate these two sequences of events? Even though Sonja figures so dominantly in both?”

“That’s just it,” Wallander said. “What if her role is far less important than we’ve thought?”

At that moment Hansson entered the cafeteria. He cast a longing glance at their coffee. Right behind him was a gray-haired, pleasant-looking man with many stripes on his epaulets who turned out to be the captain. Wallander got to his feet and introduced himself. When Captain Sund spoke, it was clear he was not from Scania.

“Terrible things,” he said.

“No one has seen anything,” Hansson said. “Even though you would think someone would have noticed the victim on his way down to the engine room.”

“So there are no witnesses?”

“I spoke to the two engineers who were on duty on the trip over from Poland. Neither one of them saw anything.”

“And the doors to the engine room aren’t locked?” Wallander asked.

“Our security measures don’t allow it. But they are clearly marked with signs that say ‘No entry.’ Everyone who works in the area knows to keep an eye out for stray passengers. Sometimes when people have had a bit too much to drink, they wander. But I never thought anything like this could happen.”

“I take it the ferry is completely empty by now,” Wallander said. “But there isn’t by any chance a car that hasn’t been claimed?”

Sund sent out a message on the radio in his hand. A crew member down in the car hold answered.

“All vehicles have been claimed,” Sund reported. “The car hold is completely empty.”

“What about the cabins? Is there any unclaimed luggage?”

Sund went off in search of an answer. Hansson sat down. Wallander noted that Hansson had been unusually careful in his questioning of the crew.

When the ferry left Swinoujscie the captain had estimated that the trip to Ystad would take about seven hours. Wallander asked if any of the engineers could point to a time when the body must have slipped into the axles. Could it have happened even before the ferry left Poland? Hansson had thought to ask this question and could report that yes, the body could indeed have been there at the very start of the trip.

There wasn’t much to add. No one had seen anything unusual, let alone noticed Landahl. There had been a couple hundred passengers aboard, most of them Polish truckers. There had also been a delegation from the Swedish cement industry. They were returning from an investment conference in Poland.

“We need to know if Landahl was traveling with anyone,” Wallander said when Hansson finished. “That’s very important. What we need is a photograph of him. Then someone will have to take the boat back and forth tomorrow and see if anyone recognizes him.”

“I hope that someone isn’t me,” Hansson said. “I get seasick.”

“Then find someone else,” Wallander said. “What I need you to do right now is to go up to Snappehanegatan and get his picture. Check with that boy who works in the hardware store to make sure it’s a decent likeness.”

“You mean that guy Ryss?”

“That’s the one. He must have seen his successor at some point.”

“The ferry leaves at six tomorrow morning.”

“So you’ll have to take care of all this by then,” Wallander said patiently.

Hansson disappeared. Wallander and Martinsson remained in the cafeteria for a while longer. Susann Bexell came in after a while and sat down with them. She was very pale.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said. “First a young woman burned to death in a high-voltage area, and now this.”

“Can you confirm if the victim is a young man?” Wallander said.

“Yes, it’s a young man.”

“Can you give us a cause of death? A time?”

“Of course not. You saw what kind of shape he was in. The boy was completely crushed. One of the rescue workers vomited. I have a great deal of understanding for that reaction.”

“Is Nyberg still there?”

“I think so.”

Bexell left. Captain Sund still had not returned. Martinsson’s cell phone started to vibrate. It was Lisa Holgersson calling from Copenhagen. Martinsson stretched the phone out to Wallander, but he shook his head.

“You talk to her.”

“What should I tell her?”

“Tell her the facts. What do you think?”

Wallander got up and started pacing up and down the empty cafeteria. Landahl’s death had closed an avenue that had seemed promising. But what kept working its way to the front of his mind was the idea that his death might have been avoidable, if it was the case that Landahl had fled not because he was the killer but because he feared someone else. The real murderer.

Wallander chastised himself. He hadn’t been thinking clearly. He had simply jumped to the easiest conclusion without keeping other theories in mind. And now Landahl was dead.

Martinsson finished his conversation and put his phone away. Wallander returned.

“I don’t think she was completely sober, to tell you the truth,” he said.

“She’s at a police conference,” Wallander replied. “But at least now she knows what our evening has been like.”

Captain Sund returned.

“There is one bag that was left behind in one of the cabins,” he said.

Wallander and Martinsson got up at the same time. They followed the captain through a myriad of corridors until they came to a cabin with a woman wearing the company uniform posted outside. She was Polish and spoke poor Swedish.

“According to our records this cabin was booked by a passenger named Jonasson.”

Wallander and Martinsson exchanged glances.

“Is there anyone who can give us a description of him?”

It turned out that the captain spoke excellent Polish. He translated the question for the woman, who listened and then shook her head.

“He didn’t share the cabin with anyone?”

“No.”

Wallander went in. The cabin was narrow and windowless. Wallander shuddered at the thought of having to spend a stormy night in such quarters. On the bed that was attached to the wall there was a small suitcase with wheels. Martinsson handed him a pair of rubber gloves, which he put on. He opened the bag. It was empty. They searched the room for about ten minutes but without results.

“Nyberg will have to take a look in here,” Wallander said when they had given up. “And the taxi driver who took Landahl to the ferry might be able to identify the bag.”

Wallander went back out into the corridor. Martinsson made the arrangements to keep the cabin undisturbed and unoccupied until further notice. Wallander looked at the doors to the cabins on either side. There were used sheets and towels outside each one. The numbers on the doors were 309 and 311.

“Try to find out who the people were who were staying on either side,” Wallander said. “They may have heard something or even seen someone come or go.” Martinsson wrote it down in his notebook, then started speaking in English to the Polish woman. Wallander had often been envious of Martinsson’s proficiency in that language. Wallander spoke it badly. Linda had often teased him about his poor pronunciation, especially when they traveled together. Captain Sund escorted Wallander back up the stairs.

It was almost midnight.

“Would it be in order for me to offer refreshments of a stronger nature after this ordeal?” Sund asked.

“Unfortunately not,” Wallander said.

A call came through on Sund’s radio. He excused himself. Wallander was actually glad to be left alone. His conscience kept gnawing at him. Could Landahl have had a chance if Wallander had made different assumptions from the beginning? He knew there was no answer to be found, just the reality of having to live with his self-accusations.

Martinsson turned up after twenty minutes.

“There was a Norwegian named Larsen in room 309. He’s probably on the road to Norway as we speak, but I do have his phone number. In 311, however, there was a couple from Ystad, a Mr. and Mrs. Tomander.”

“Talk to them first thing tomorrow,” Wallander said. “That may give us something.”

“I saw Nyberg on the stairs, by the way. He was covered in oil up to his waist. But he promised to take a look at the cabin once he had put on fresh clothes.”

“I don’t know that we can do much else tonight,” Wallander said.

They walked together through the deserted ferry terminal, where a few young men were sleeping curled up on benches. The ticket counters were all closed. They stopped when they reached Wallander’s car.

“We have to go through everything again tomorrow morning,” Wallander said. “At eight o’clock.”

Martinsson studied his face.

“You seem nervous.”

“That’s because I am. I’m always nervous when I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“How is the internal investigation going?”

“I haven’t heard anything new. No journalists have tried to call, either, but that may be because I keep my phone unplugged most of the time.”

“It’s too bad when these things happen.” Martinsson said. Wallander sensed a double meaning in his words. He was on his guard immediately, and angry.

“What exactly do you mean?”

“Isn’t it what we’re always afraid of? That we’re going to lose control and start lashing out at people?”

“I slapped her. End of story. I was trying to protect her mother.”

“I know,” Martinsson said. “But still.”

He doesn’t believe me, Wallander thought after he sat down behind the wheel. Maybe no one does.

The insight came as a shock. He had never before felt truly betrayed or abandoned by his closest colleagues. He sat there without even turning on the engine. The feeling overwhelmed him, even overshadowing the image of the young man who had been crushed in the propeller axles.

For the second time that week he felt hurt and bitter. I’m quitting, he thought. I’ll turn in my pink slip first thing tomorrow and then they can shove this whole investigation up their ass.

He was still upset when he got home. In his mind he continued a heated discussion with Martinsson.

It took a long time for him to fall asleep.

They met at eight o’clock the following morning. Viktorsson joined them, as did Nyberg, who still had oil under his fingernails. Wallander was in a better mood this morning than he had been the previous night. He was not going to quit, nor would he confront Martinsson. First he would wait for the results of the internal investigation. Then he would wait for the right moment to tell his colleagues what he thought of them and their lack of faith in him.

They talked at length about the events of last night. Martinsson had already spoken to Mr. and Mrs. Tomander, neither of whom had seen or heard anything from the cabin next door. The Norwegian, Larsen, had not yet reached his home, but his wife had assured Martinsson he would be back by mid-morning.

Wallander discussed his two theories regarding Landahl with the group, and no one had any objections to make. The discussion proceeded calmly and methodically, but Wallander sensed that under the surface everyone was impatient to return to their individual tasks.

When they finished, Wallander had decided to concentrate his energies on Tynnes Falk. He was more convinced than ever before that everything started with him. Lundberg’s murder had to be pushed aside for now, and its exact connection with the other events still remained to be determined. The question Wallander kept returning to was very simple. What dark forces had been set in motion when Falk had died during his evening walk? Had he died from natural causes? Wallander spent the next few hours calling the coroner’s office in Lund and talking again to the pathologist who had performed the autopsy on Falk. He also again called Enander, Falk’s physician who had visited Wallander at the police station. As before, there was no consensus, but by lunchtime, when Wallander’s stomach was screaming with hunger, he was convinced that Falk had in fact died a natural death. No crime had been committed per se, but this sudden death in front of a cash machine had set a certain course of events in motion.

Wallander pulled over a sheet of paper and wrote the following words:

He looked at what he had written, then added a final item.

The list formed an impenetrable matrix. What was it he was unable to perceive? In order to assuage his sense of irritation and impatience, he left the station and took a walk. He stopped in at a pizzeria and ate. Then he returned to his office and stayed there until five. He was on the verge of giving up. He couldn’t see a motive or logic behind any of the events. He couldn’t get through.

He was about to get a cup of coffee when the phone rang. It was Martinsson.

“I’m at Runnerström Square,” he said. “It’s finally happened.”

“What?”

“Modin got through. He’s in. And there are strange things happening on the screen down here.”

Wallander threw down the receiver.

At last, he thought. We have finally broken through.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

It was unfortunate that Wallander didn’t think to look around as he got out of his car at Runnerström Square. If he had, he might have caught a glimpse of the shadow that quickly retreated into the darkness further up the street. He would then have known not only that someone was watching them, but that this someone was always in their presence and knew what they were doing — almost what they were thinking. The undercover cars that were posted on Apelbergsgatan and Runnerström Square had not stopped him.

But Wallander didn’t look around. He locked his car and hurried over to Falk’s building, eager to see for himself the strange things Martinsson claimed were happening on Falk’s computer. When Wallander walked in, both Modin and Martinsson were staring at the screen. Wallander was surprised to see that Martinsson had brought in the kind of folding chair that people used on camping or hunting trips. There were also two additional computers in the room. Modin and Martinsson were mumbling and pointing. Wallander could almost feel the intense concentration emanating from them. He greeted the others without receiving much in the way of a reply.

The screen really did look different now. The chaotic swarms of numbers were gone, replaced by more orderly, fixed arrangements of numbers. Robert Modin had removed his headphones. His hands wandered back and forth between the three keyboards like a virtuoso playing three different instruments at once. Wallander waited. Martinsson had a pad of paper in his hands, and from time to time Modin asked him to write something down. It was clear that Modin was running the show. After about ten minutes it was as if they suddenly became aware of Wallander’s presence. Modin stopped typing.

“What’s happening?” Wallander asked. “And why are there now three computers?”

“If you can’t get over the mountain, you have to go around it,” Modin said. His face was shiny with sweat, but he looked happy.

“It’s best if Robert explains,” Martinsson said.

“I never did manage to find out what the password was,” the boy said. “But I brought in my own computers and connected them to Falk’s. Then I was able to get in through the back door, you could say.”

Wallander felt the discussion was already getting too abstract. He knew computers had windows, but he had never heard anything about there being doors.

“How did that work?”

“It’s hard to explain more precisely without getting into technical details. Moreover, it’s kind of a trade secret that I’d rather not get into.”

“Okay, so skip it. What have you found?”

Martinsson took over.

“Falk was connected to the Internet, of course, and in a file with the bizarre name ‘Jacob’s Marsh’ we found a long row of phone numbers arranged in a particular order. Or at least that was what we thought. No more codes. There were two columns, one consisting of names and then a long number. Right now we’re trying to figure out exactly what these are.”

“There are actually both phone numbers and codes in there,” Modin added. “And there are long number combinations that serve as code names for various institutions across the world. There are codes for the USA, Asia, Europe, even for Brazil and Nigeria.”

“What kind of institutions are we talking about?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Martinsson said. “But we found at least one that Robert recognized right away. That was why we called you.”

“What was it?”

“The Pentagon,” Modin said.

Wallander couldn’t decide if there was a note of triumph or fear in Modin’s voice.

“What does that mean, then?”

“We don’t know yet,” Martinsson said. “But there is a lot of classified, perhaps even illegally obtained, information stored in this computer. It could mean that Falk had obtained access to all of these institutions.”

“I have the feeling that someone like me has been working on this computer,” Modin said suddenly.

“So Falk was breaking into other people’s computer networks?”

“That seems to be the case.”

Wallander understood less and less. But his sense of anxiety was returning.

“And what could all this classfied information be used for?” he asked. “Can you discern a purpose?”

“It’s too early for that,” Martinsson said. “First we have to identify more of these institutions. Then we might get a clearer picture. But it will take time. Everything is complicated, especially because Falk arranged it precisely so that no one from the outside would be able to look in and see what he was doing.”

He got up from the folding chair.

“I have to go home for a while,” he said. “It’s Terese’s birthday today. But I’ll be back soon.”

He handed Wallander the pad.

“Give her my congratulations,” he said. “How old is she?”

“Sixteen.”

In his mind Wallander remembered her as a little girl. Wallander had been to her fifth birthday party. He thought about the fact that she was two years older than Eva Persson.

Martinsson started walking away, then stopped.

“I forgot to tell you that I talked to Larsen,” he said.

It took Wallander a few seconds to place his name.

“He had one of the cabins next to Landahl,” Martinsson continued.

“The walls were thin, so he heard him but never saw him. Larsen was tired and slept most of the way from Poland.”

“What was it he heard?”

“Voices, but nothing indicating any trouble or tumult. He couldn’t say exactly how many people he thought there were.”

“People don’t usually talk to themselves,” Wallander said. “It seems reasonable to assume there was at least one other person there.”

“I asked him to be in touch if he thought of anything else.”

Martinsson left. Wallander sat down carefully on the portable chair. Modin kept working. Wallander realized the futility in asking more questions. This new age of electronic developments would eventually require a whole new type of police officer. As usual, criminals were way ahead of the game.

Modin hit the RETURN button and leaned back in his chair. The modem next to the monitor started blinking.

“What are you doing now?” Wallander asked.

“I’m sending an e-mail to see where it ends up. But I’m sending it from my own computer.”

“But weren’t you using the keyboard for Falk’s computer?”

“I’ve connected them.”

Modin jumped and leaned in toward the monitor. Then he started typing again. Wallander waited.

Suddenly everything on the screen went blank. Then the numbers came back. Modin furrowed his brow.

“What’s happening?”

“I don’t know exactly. But I was denied access. I have to cover my tracks. It’ll take a couple of minutes.”

The typing continued. Wallander was starting to get impatient.

“One more time,” Modin mumbled.

Then something happened that made Modin jump again. He stared at the screen for a long time.

“The World Bank,” he said finally.

“What do you mean?”

“One of the institutions Falk has access to is the World Bank. If I’m right, the code here is for a branch that deals with global finance inspections.”

“The Pentagon and the World Bank,” Wallander said. “That’s not exactly the corner store.”

“I think it’s time I had a little conference with my friends,” Modin said. “I’ve asked them to be on alert.”

“Where are they?”

“One lives in Rattvik, the other one in California.”

Wallander realized it was high time he contacted the National Police cybercrime division. He started imagining uncomfortable situations ahead. He didn’t entertain any illusions regarding his actions: he would be strongly criticized for his decision to turn to Modin, even though Modin had turned out to be highly adept.

While Modin was communicating with his friends, Wallander paced around the room. He was thinking about the case, but his thoughts kept returning to the feeling that his colleagues mistrusted him. Perhaps this was a problem that extended beyond the incident with Eva Persson; perhaps they thought he was over the hill? Did they think it was time for Martinsson to take charge?

He was hurt and full of self-pity. But anger also pounded in his veins. He wasn’t going to go without a fight. He had no exotic place waiting where he could start a new life. He had no stud ranch to sell. All he had to look forward to was a state pension, and a meager one at that.

The typing behind him had stopped. Modin got up from his chair and stretched.

“I’m hungry,” he said.

“What did your friends say?”

“We’re taking an hour to think. Then we’re going to talk again.”

Wallander was also hungry. He suggested they go get a pizza. Modin seemed almost insulted by the suggestion.

“I never eat pizza,” he said. “It’s not healthy.”

“What do you eat?”

“Sprouts.”

“Nothing else?”

“Egg and vinegar is good.”

Wallander wondered if there was any restaurant, let alone in Ystad, that sported the kind of menu likely to appeal to Robert Modin. He doubted it.

Modin looked through the plastic bags filled with food that he had brought with him, but there seemed to be nothing that caught his fancy.

“A plain salad will do,” he said.

They left the building. Wallander asked Modin if he wanted them to drive, but Modin preferred to walk.

They went to the only salad bar Wallander knew of in Ystad. Wallander ate heartily, but Modin scrutinized every lettuce leaf and vegetable before putting it in his mouth. Wallander had never seen a person who chewed so slowly. He tried conversing with Modin, but the latter only answered in monosyllables. After a while, Wallander realized he was still obsessed with the figures and patterns in Falk’s computer.

They were back at Runnerström Square shortly before seven. Martinsson was still gone. Modin sat down at the computer to reconnect with his friends. Wallander imagined they looked exactly like the young man beside him.

“No one has managed to trace me,” Modin said after he had performed some complicated operations on the computer.

“How can you see that?”

“I just see it.”

Wallander shifted on the folding chair. It really is like being on a hunting trip, he thought. We’re hunting electronic elk. We know they’re out there. But we don’t know what direction they’re going to come from.

Wallander’s cell phone rang. Modin flinched.

“I hate cell phones,” he said with distaste.

Wallander walked out onto the staircase. It was Höglund. Wallander told her where he was and what they had managed to extract from Falk’s computer.

“The World Bank and the Pentagon,” she said, “They must be two of the world’s most powerful institutions.”

“We still don’t know what all this means,” Wallander said. “But why are you calling?”

“I decided I needed to talk to that guy Ryss again. After all, he was the person who led us to Landahl, and I’m becoming more and more convinced that Eva Persson actually knew very little about the friend she seems to have worshipped. In any case, we know she’s lying.”

“What did he say? His name is Kalle, isn’t it?”

“Kalle Ryss. I wanted to ask him why he and Sonja broke up. I don’t think he was expecting that question, and he clearly didn’t want to answer it, but I wouldn’t back down. And then he said something interesting. He said he broke up with her because she was never interested.”

“Interested in what?”

“In sex, of course.”

“He told you this?”

“Once he started, the whole story came pouring out of him. He fell in love with her from the moment he first saw her, but after they started dating it became clear that she had no interest in sex. Finally he grew tired of it. But it’s the reason for her lack of interest that’s important.”

“What was it?”

“Sonja had told him that she was raped a few years ago. She was still traumatized by that experience.”

“Sonja Hökberg was raped?”

“According to him she was. I started checking our files but didn’t find any case involving Sonja.”

“And it happened in Ystad?”

“Yes. So I started putting two and two together.”

Wallander saw where she was heading.

“Lundberg’s son. Carl-Einar?”

“Exactly. It’s just a theory, but I think it has its merits.”

“What do you think happened?”

“This is what I was thinking: Carl-Einar Lundberg has been implicated in a brutal rape case. He’s acquitted, but there were several facts that pointed to his being the perpetrator. In which case, he could have committed an earlier rape. But Sonja never went to the police.”

“Why not?”

“There are many reasons why a woman wouldn’t go to the police in such a case. You should know that.”

“So what’s your conclusion?”

“It’s just a theory.”

“I still want to hear it.”

“It’s somewhat bizarre, I admit, but I think it’s possible to see Lundberg’s murder as a kind of revenge by proxy.”

“Revenge?”

“At least that gives us a motive. And we also know something about Sonja.”

“What is that?”

“That she was stubborn. And you said her stepfather described her as a strong person.”

“I’m still not entirely convinced. How did the girls know that the father would be the one picking them up in the taxi? And how would she have known it was Carl-Einar’s father?”

“Ystad is a small town. And we don’t know how Sonja reacted to the rape. She could have been consumed by thoughts of revenge. Women are deeply affected by rape. Some withdraw and turn inward. But some do become possessed by violent thoughts of revenge.”

Wallander realized that what Höglund had discovered could be important. It fit his idea that Lundberg’s murder was incidental to the central chain of events surrounding Falk.

“I think you need to find out if Eva Persson knew any of this,” he said.

“I agree. Then we need to check if Sonja ever came home with bruises. The rape that Carl-Einar Lundberg was accused of was violent.”

“You’re right.”

“I’ll get on it.”

Höglund promised to call if she found anything else. Wallander put his phone in his pocket but stayed out on the dark landing. There was a thought that was bubbling up from his unconscious. Why was it that Sonja Hökberg had escaped from the police station? They had never dug very deeply into that matter. They had simply stopped at the most logical conclusion; that she wanted to skip out and avoid responsibility. After all, she had already confessed to the crime. But now Wallander saw another way to look at it. Sonja Hökberg may have left because she had something else to hide. What could that have been? Wallander instinctively sensed that he was getting closer to something important. But there was still something missing, a connection he was trying to make.

Then he thought of what it was. Sonja Hökberg could have left the station in the vain hope of getting away. So far so good. But somewhere out there waiting for her had been a person who was not as concerned about the fact that she had just confessed to killing Lundberg as about the fact that she might have told the police something else while she was there. Something that concerned a very different matter than personal revenge.

This works, Wallander thought. This way Lundberg fits with everything else and there’s a reasonable explanation for what follows. Something had to be kept quiet, something Sonja might have told us if she had lived. She is killed to keep her quiet. But her killer is done away with in turn. just like Modin sweeps away any traces of himself in the computer. Someone has been trying to clean up.

What was it that had transpired in Luanda? he thought again. Who is “C”? And what does the number twenty refer to?

Höglund’s idea had cheered him up. He returned to Modin’s side with renewed energy.

Fifteen minutes later, Martinsson came back. He described in detail the cake he had just eaten, while Wallander listened impatiently. Then Wallander asked Modin to fill Martinsson in on what they had discovered while he was gone.

“The World Bank?” Martinsson asked. “What does that have to do with Falk?”

“That’s what we have to find out.”

Martinsson removed his coat, sat back down on the folding chair, and rubbed his hands together. Wallander summarized his conversation with Höglund. Martinsson also sensed the importance of the discovery.

“That gives us a way in,” he said when Wallander had finished.

“It gives us more than that,” he said. “We’re finally starting to make sense of this.”

“I’ve never seen a case like this,” Martinsson said thoughtfully. “We still have so much we can’t account for. We don’t know why the electrical relay was placed in the morgue. We don’t know why Falk’s body was removed. I just don’t think cutting off his fingers was the driving motive.”

“We’ll do what we can to fill in these holes,” Wallander said. “I’m going to head back to the office. But let me know if anything happens.”

“We’ll keep going until ten,” Modin said suddenly. “But then I need to sleep.”

Once Wallander was down on the street he was suddenly at a loss. Should he try to keep going for a few hours? Or should he head straight home?

He decided to do both. There was no reason he couldn’t work at the kitchen table. All he needed was time to digest what Höglund had told him. He got into his car and drove home.

He sat down at the kitchen table and spread out his notes. Höglund’s theory was on his mind and he wanted to go through the case methodically. At eleven he finally got up from the table and went to bed.

The holes are still there, he thought. But it still seems that Höglund’s insight has brought us forward.

He went to bed shortly before midnight and fell asleep almost immediately.

Modin stopped at exactly ten o’clock. They packed up his computers, and Martinsson drove him out to Löderup personally. They agreed that he would pick him up at eight the following morning.

Modin did not go straight to bed after Martinsson left. He knew he shouldn’t be doing what he was about to do. The memory of what happened after he broke into the Pentagon system was still strong. But the temptation was too great. And he had learned his lesson. Now he knew to erase all his tracks.

His parents had already gone to bed. The house was silent. Martinsson hadn’t noticed when Modin started copying some of the material he had accessed in Falk’s computer. Now he hooked up his two computers and started going through the files again, looking once more for clues and openings, new ways to climb the firewall.

A storm front came in over Luanda in the evening.

Carter had spent the evening reading a report that criticized the International Monetary Fund’s operations in some East African countries. The criticisms were well-formulated and devastating. Carter couldn’t have done a better job himself. But he remained convinced of the necessity of his actions. There was no other way to consider at this point. If the world’s financial systems remained as they were, there could be no true reform.

He put the report down and walked over to the window and watched the lightning dance across the sky. His night guards huddled under the small rain shelter they had erected.

He was about to go to bed when something led him into the study. The air conditioning unit droned loudly.

He could tell immediately that someone was trying to break into the server. But something was different. He sat down at the computer. After a while he saw what it was.

Someone had become careless.

Carter dried his hands on a handkerchief.

Then he started chasing the person who was threatening to reveal his secret.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Wallander stayed at home until nearly ten o’clock on Thursday morning. He woke up early and felt fully rested. His joy at having been able to sleep undisturbed for a whole night was so great that it gave him a guilty conscience. He should have used the extra time to work. He often wondered where his overdeveloped work ethic had come from. His mother had been a housewife who had never complained about not being able to work outside the house. At least, she had never said anything about it.

His father had certainly never undertaken extra work if he could help it. Wallander had sometimes spied on him and discovered that his father did not spend a lot of time in front of the easel. Sometimes he had been reading a book or sleeping on the old mattress in the corner of the studio. Other times he had been seated at the rickety old table playing solitaire. Physically Wallander was starting to look more and more like his father, but on the inside he was driven by a constant state of unrest and dissatisfaction, demons he had never seen in either of his parents.

He had called the station at eight o’clock. The only person he could get hold of was Hansson. Everyone else was busy with their individual investigative tasks. He had decided they should postpone their meeting until the afternoon. Then he went down to the laundry room to sign up, only to discover that the morning hours were unclaimed. He had immediately booked the following hours and returned to the apartment to pick up his dirty clothes.

The letter had arrived while he was loading his clothes into the washer. It was lying on the floor in the hallway. There was no stamp, no return address on the envelope. His name and address were written by hand. He put it on the kitchen table, thinking that it must be some kind of invitation. It wasn’t unheard of to get invitations delivered by hand. Then he hung his bedclothes out to air on the balcony. It was getting colder again, though there was no frost. He only opened the letter when it was time for his second cup of coffee. That was when he discovered that there was an unaddressed envelope inside. He opened it and read the letter. At first he couldn’t make sense of it, but then he realized he had actually received an answer to his personal ad. He put down the letter, walked around the table, then read it again.

The woman who had written to him was named Elvira Lindfeldt. She had not included a photograph of herself, but Wallander decided she must be very beautiful. Her handwriting was elegant and firm, no fussy loops or curlicues. The dating service had forwarded his ad to her and she had found it interesting. She was thirty-nine years old and divorced. She lived in Malmö. She worked for a shipping company called Heinemann & Nagel. She ended her letter by giving her phone number and saying she hoped to hear from him soon. Wallander felt like a ravenous wolf who had finally managed to fell his prey. He wanted to call her right away. But then he controlled himself and decided he should throw the letter in the trash. The meeting was doomed to be a complete failure. She would be disappointed because she probably imagined him to be different.

He also had no time for this. He was in the middle of the most complicated murder investigation he had ever been in charge of. He walked around the table a few more times. Then he realized the futility of having written to the dating service. He picked up the letter, tore it into pieces, and threw it away. Then he sat down to think about the case. Before he drove into the station he put his laundry in the dryer. The first thing he did when he got to his office was write himself a note reminding him to get his laundry when he went home. In the corridor he met Nyberg, who was on his way somewhere with a plastic bag.

“We’re going to be getting some results in today,” he said. “Among other things, we’ve been cross-checking a number of fingerprints.”

“Do you have a better idea of what happened in the engine room?”

“I don’t envy the pathologist, I’ll tell you that. The body was so crushed there wasn’t a whole piece of bone in there. Well, you saw it. You know what it looked like.”

“Sonja Hökberg was probably already unconscious or even dead by the time she was thrown against the high voltage wires,” Wallander said. “Do you think that was the case with Jonas Landahl? If it really was Landahl.”

“Oh, it was him,” Nyberg said quickly.

“How do you know that?”

“He was identified by an unusual birthmark above his ankle.”

“So there’s no doubt about his identity?”

“Not as far as I can tell. The parents have apparently been contacted as well.”

“Good. Then that’s taken care of,” Wallander said. “First Sonja Hökberg. Then her boyfriend.”

Nyberg raised his eyebrows.

“I thought he was suspected of having killed her? I know it’s a grisly way to commit suicide, but wasn’t that what it was?”

“There are other possibilities,” Wallander said. “But the most important thing for now is having established his identity.”

Wallander returned to his office. He had just taken off his coat and started to regret the fact that he’d thrown Elvira’s letter away when the phone rang. It was Lisa Holgersson. She wanted to see him immediately. He walked to her office with a sense of dread. Normally he enjoyed speaking with her, but ever since she had openly displayed her mistrust of him a week ago he had been trying to avoid her. As he might have expected, the atmosphere when he came into the room was far from relaxed. Holgersson was sitting behind her desk, and her trademark smile was tense and forced. Wallander sat down. He felt his anger starting to bubble up inside him in anticipation of whatever was about to come his way.

“I’m going to get right to the point,” she said. “The internal investigation into allegations made against you by Eva Persson and her mother is now underway.”

“Who’s in charge?”

“A man from Hässleholm.”

“A man from Hassleholm? That sounds like the name of a bad TV series.”

“He’s a highly regarded police officer. I also need to inform you that you have been reported to the justice department ombudsman. And not just you. We have both been reported.”

“Did you slap her, too?”

“I’m responsible for the conduct of my officers.”

“Who filed the report?”

“Eva Persson’s lawyer. His name is Klas Harryson.”

“Thanks for letting me know,” Wallander said and got up. He was furious now. The energy from the morning was quickly draining from his body, and he didn’t want to lose it.

“I’m not finished yet.”

“We’re in the middle of a very complicated homicide investigation.”

“I spoke to Hansson this morning. I know how it’s going.”

He said nothing about having talked to her, Wallander thought. The feeling that his colleagues were going behind his back returned.

He sat down heavily.

“This is a difficult situation,” she said.

“Not really,” Wallander said, interrupting her. “What happened between Eva Persson, her mother, and me happened in exactly the way that I told you. I haven’t changed a single word of my story since the beginning. You should be able to tell that I don’t flinch or get nervous when you press me on details. What makes me mad as all hell, however, is that you don’t believe me.”

“What do you expect me to do?”

“I want you to believe me when I talk to you.”

“But the girl and her mother have a different story. And there are two of them.”

“There could be a hundred of them and it wouldn’t change a thing. You should believe me, not them. They have reason to lie.”

“So do you.”

“I do?”

“If you hit her without provocation.”

Wallander got up a second time, even more forcefully.

“I won’t even comment on the last thing you said. It’s insulting.” She started to protest, but he interrupted her.

“Is there anything else?”

“I’m not done yet.”

Wallander remained standing. The situation was almost unbearably tense. He was not going to back down, but he also wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.

“The situation we’re in has become serious enough for me to be forced to take some action,” she said. “While the internal investigation is underway I have to suspend you from your work.”

Wallander heard her words and knew what they meant. Both Hansson and his now-dead colleague Svedberg had been suspended on earlier occasions. In Hansson’s case, Wallander had been convinced that the allegations were false. In Svedberg’s case he had not been so sure, and the allegations had later been corroborated. But in neither case had he supported Björk, who was chief back then, in going so far as to suspend his colleagues. It seemed to him to be calling them guilty before the investigation had yielded any results.

Suddenly his anger left him. He was completely calm.

“You do as you like,” he said. “But if you suspend me now I will resign effective immediately.”

“That sounds like a threat.”

“I don’t care what the hell it sounds like. It’s just a fact. And don’t think you can count on me coming back if the investigation proves that they were lying and I was telling the truth.”

“I wish you would try to cooperate instead of threatening to resign.”

“I have been a police officer for many years,” Wallander said, “and I know enough to tell you that the steps you say you have to take are not necessary. There’s someone higher up who’s very nervous about that picture appearing in the paper and who wants to make an example of me. And you are choosing to go along with it.”

“It’s nothing like that,” she said.

“You know as well as I do that it’s exactly like that. When were you planning to suspend me, anyway? As soon as you dismissed me from this meeting?”

“The man from Hassleholm promised to work quickly. Since we are in the middle of a difficult homicide investigation right now, I was going to put it off.”

“Why? Let Martinsson take charge. He’ll do an excellent job.”

“I thought we would finish out the week as usual.”

“No,” Wallander said. “Nothing is as usual right now. Either you suspend me as of this moment or else you don’t do it at all.”

“I don’t understand why you have to resort to these threats. I thought we had a good working relationship.”

“I thought so too. But clearly I was wrong.”

They were silent.

“So how is it going to be?” Wallander asked. “Am I suspended or not?”

“You are not suspended,” she said. “At least not right now.”

Wallander left her office. As he walked through the halls he realized he was drenched with sweat. When he got to his office he locked the door behind him. Now the full force of his emotions came back. He wanted to sit down and write his resignation, clear out his office, and leave the station for good. Their afternoon meeting would have to take place without him. He was never coming back.

At the same time there was something inside him that resisted. If he left now, it would look like he was guilty. Then the final conclusion of the internal investigation wouldn’t have much impact. He would always be tainted.

He slowly arrived at his decision. He would keep working for now, but he would inform his colleagues of the situation. The most important thing was that he had let Holgersson know where things stood. He did not intend to toe the line on this or ask for mercy.

He started to calm down. He opened his door wide and continued working. At noon, he went home and took his clothes out of the dryer. He carefully picked the pieces of Elvira’s letter from the trash, although he couldn’t exactly say why. At least she had nothing to do with the police.

He ate lunch at István’s restaurant and chatted with one of his father’s friends, who happened to be there. He returned to the police station shortly after one o’clock.

He walked in through the glass doors feeling somewhat on edge. Chief Holgersson could have changed her mind since their meeting and decided to suspend him after all. He didn’t know how he would react to this. Secretly he found the idea of handing in his resignation appalling. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what his life would look like after that. But when he reached his office there were only a few unimportant messages waiting for him. Holgersson had not tried to reach him. Wallander took a few deep breaths and then called Martinsson, who was at Runnerström Square.

“We’re working slowly but surely,” he said. “He’s managed to break a couple more codes.”

Wallander could hear the rustling of paper. Then Martinsson came back on the line.

“We now have a connection to a stockbroker in Seoul and to an English firm by the name of Lonrho. I contacted a person in Stockholm who was able to tell me that Lonrho was originally an African company that was involved in highly illegal operations in southern Rhodesia during the time of sanctions.”

“But how are we supposed to interpret this?” Wallander broke in. “A stockbroker in Korea? And this other company, whatever its name is? How does it relate to Falk and our investigation?”

“We’re trying to figure it out. Robert says there are about eighty companies entered into this program. But it will take us a while to find out what the connections between them are and what the program is.”

“But if you were going to speculate? What would you say?”

Martinsson chuckled.

“I see money.”

“And what else?”

“Isn’t that enough? The World Bank, the Korean stockbroker, and this African company all share that as a common denominator. Money.”

Wallander agreed.

“Who knows,” he said. “Perhaps the key player in all of this isn’t Falk but the cash machine where he died.”

Martinsson laughed. Wallander suggested that they meet at around three.

After the conversation ended, Wallander started thinking about Elvira Lindfeldt. He tried to imagine what she could look like, but his mind always came up with a picture of Baiba. Or Mona. Or a very brief glimpse of a woman he had met briefly the year before at a roadside café outside Västervik.

He was interrupted in his thoughts by Hansson, who suddenly appeared in the doorway. Wallander felt guilty, as if his thoughts had been clearly visible.

“All the keys are accounted for,” Hansson said.

Wallander looked at him without understanding what he was talking about. But he didn’t say anything, since he had the feeling that he should know what Hansson meant.

“I have some documentation from Sydkraft,” he went on. “The people who had keys to the substation can all account for them.”

“Good,” Wallander said. “It’s always helpful to be able to strike something off our list.”

“Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to trace the Mercedes van.”

Wallander leaned back in his chair.

“I think you can put that aside for now. We’ll have to get the car eventually, but for now there are more important tasks.”

Hansson nodded and wrote something in his notebook. Wallander told him about the three o’clock meeting. Hansson left.

Wallander put aside his thoughts of Elvira and her appearance. He got back to his paperwork and also thought about what Martinsson had said. The phone rang. It was Viktorsson, asking how the case was going.

“I thought Hansson kept you abreast of all developments.”

“But you are in charge of this investigation.”

Viktorsson’s comment surprised Wallander. He had been sure that Holgersson had arrived at her decision to suspend him in consultation with Viktorsson. But he was fairly sure of the fact that Viktorsson was not being disingenuous when he said Wallander was in charge. Wallander automatically softened toward him.

“I can come and see you tomorrow morning.”

“I’m free at half past eight.”

Wallander made a note of it. Then he spent another half-hour preparing for the meeting. At twenty to three he went to get more coffee, but the machine was broken. Wallander thought once more about Erik Hökberg’s observation about the vulnerability of society. That gave him a new idea. He went back to his office to give Hökberg a call. Hökberg picked up at once. Wallander gave him some details about the latest events and asked if he had ever heard the name Jonas Landahl. Hökberg answered with a definite no. That surprised Wallander.

“Are you completely sure?”

“The name is unusual enough that I would have remembered it. Was he the one who killed Sonja?”

“We don’t know. But they knew each other, and we have some information indicating that they may even have been involved.”

Wallander wondered if he should mention the idea of rape, but he decided it was the wrong moment. It wasn’t something they should discuss over the phone. Instead, he moved on to the question he had been wanting to ask.

“When I was out to see you last, you told me about your computer transactions. I had the impression then that there were no real limitations to what you could do.”

“That’s right. If you connect to the large databases around the world, you’re always at the center of things. It doesn’t matter where you are physically.”

“That means that you could do business with a stockbroker in Seoul if you felt like it.”

“In theory, yes.”

“And what would I need to know in order to do that?”

“First and foremost you would need his e-mail address. Then the security systems have to match up. He has to be able to see who I am, and vice versa. But otherwise there are no real problems. None of a technical nature, at any rate.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Each country naturally has its own set of laws and regulations governing trade. You would have to know what those are, unless you are operating illegally.”

“Since there is so much money involved, the security measures must be pretty high. Do you think they are invincible?”

“I’m not the right man to ask those questions. But as a police officer you should know that anyone with a strong enough desire can do almost anything. What is it people say? If you really wanted to kill the president of the USA, you could do it. But now I’m getting curious about why you’re asking me all these questions.”

“You impressed me as having a great deal of technical expertise.”

“Only on the surface. The electronic world is so complicated and is changing so fast that I doubt there’s anyone out there who understands it completely. Or who has control over it.”

Wallander promised to be in touch with him soon. Then he went to the conference room. Hansson and Nyberg were already there. They were talking about the coffee machine that was breaking down more and more often these days. Wallander nodded to them and sat down. Höglund and Martinsson arrived at the same time. Wallander had not yet decided if he was going to begin or end by talking about his meeting with Holgersson. He finally decided to wait. His hardworking colleagues were involved in a difficult investigation and he shouldn’t burden them more than absolutely necessary.

They began by discussing the events surrounding Jonas Landahl’s death. There were no eyewitness accounts. No one had seen him on the ferry, no one had seen him make his way to the engine room.

“I find it very strange,” Wallander said. “No one saw him, either when he paid for his cabin or when he was moving about the ship. No one saw him enter the restricted area leading to the engine room. It makes no sense.”

“He must have traveled with someone,” Höglund said. “I spoke to one of the engineers before I got here, and he said it would have been impossible for Landahl to squeeze himself in between the axles on his own.”

“So he must have been forced into that position,” Wallander said. “Which means we now have two people who managed to find their way into the engine room without being seen. And one person who made his way back. But we can draw one conclusion from this, which is that Landahl must have accompanied this person willingly. If he had been coerced, someone would probably have noticed. It would also have been difficult for the killer to force Landahl down those steep ladders.”

They kept discussing various aspects of the case until six o’clock, at which time Wallander decided they were no longer being productive. Everyone was tired. Wallander also decided not to mention his conversation with Holgersson at all. He simply didn’t have the energy.

Martinsson returned to Runnerström Square, where Modin was working. Hansson brought up the point that Modin should probably be compensated in some way. Nyberg yawned. Wallander saw that he still had oil under his fingernails. Wallander stood around in the corridor with Hansson and Höglund and talked for a few more minutes. They assigned some of the tasks that remained. Then Wallander went to his office and closed his door.

He sat and stared at the phone for a long time without understanding his hesitation. Finally he picked it up and dialed Elvira Lindfeldt’s number.

She picked up after the seventh ring.

“Lindfeldt.”

Wallander quickly put the phone down. Then he waited a few minutes before dialing her number again. This time she answered immediately. He liked the sound of her voice.

Wallander told her who he was, and they chatted in a casual way for a few minutes. It was apparently quite windy in Malm6, more so than in Ystad. Elvira also complained that many of her colleagues at work were coming down with colds. Wallander agreed. Fall was always such a difficult time that way. He was recovering from a sore throat himself.

“It would be nice to get together sometime,” she said.

“I’m not a big believer in dating services,” he said, regretting it as soon as the words left his mouth.

“It’s really no better or worse than any other way to meet people,” she said. “We’re both adults, after all.”

Then she said another thing that surprised him. She asked him what he was doing that evening. She suggested that they meet in Malmö.

I can’t, Wallander thought. This is way too fast. And I have work to do.

Then he said yes.

They decided to meet at eight-thirty at the Savoy Bar.

“We’ll skip the carnations,” she said. “I think we’ll be able to pick each other out.”

The conversation came to an end.

Wallander wondered what he was getting himself into. But he was also excited.

Then he realized it was already half past six. He had to get ready.

Chapter Thirty

Wallander parked outside the Savoy at exactly twenty-seven minutes past eight. He had driven way too fast on his way from Ystad because he thought he would be late. He had taken a long time deciding what to wear. He’d finally picked a fresh but unironed shirt from the pile of clean clothes, and then he couldn’t decide on a tie. Finally he decided against one altogether. But his shoes were scuffed and needed polishing. The end result was that he left the apartment later than he intended.

Hansson had also called him in the middle of his preparations and asked him if he knew where Nyberg was. Wallander had not managed to find out why it was so important to him. He had kept his answers so short that Hansson had asked him if he was in a hurry. Wallander had been secretive enough that Hansson had not asked any further questions. When he was about to leave, the phone rang again. This time it was Linda. There was a lull at the restaurant and her boss was on vacation, so she thought she would check in with him. Wallander almost told her where he was going. Linda was the one who had spurred him to get into this in the first place. She immediately sensed he was in a hurry. Wallander knew he could never put anything past her. But he still tried to tell her as convincingly as possible that he was about to attend to a work-related matter. They agreed she would call him the following evening.

Once Wallander was on the road, he realized he had almost no gas. He thought he could almost make it to Malmö, but didn’t want to take any chances. He pulled into a gas station outside Skurup and doubted that he would be able to make it in time. He didn’t even know why it was so important to him. But he still remembered the time when he had been ten minutes late for a date with Mona and she had simply left.

But he did make it in time. He stayed in the car for a moment and looked at his face in the mirror. He was thinner now than he’d been a few years ago, and his features were more sharply defined. She wouldn’t know that he had his father’s face. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. He forced all his expectations away. Even if he wasn’t likely to be disappointed, she probably would. They would meet in the bar, have a drink, and then it would be over. He would be back in his bed by midnight. When he woke up the next day he would already have forgotten her and also be confirmed in his suspicions that this dating-service business was nothing for him.

He stayed in the car until almost twenty to nine, then got out and walked across the street to the Savoy.

They saw each other at the same time. She was sitting at a table in the far corner. Apart from some men at the bar there weren’t many guests, and she was the only unaccompanied woman. Wallander caught her gaze and she smiled. When she stood up to greet him he saw that she was very tall. She was wearing a dark-blue suit. Her skirt came to just above her knees and he saw that she had beautiful legs.

“Am I right?” he asked as he stretched out his hand.

“If you are Kurt Wallander, I am Elvira.”

He sat down across the table from her.

“I don’t smoke,” she said. “But I do drink.”

“So do I,” Wallander said. “But not tonight. I’m driving, so I’ll have to stick to mineral water.”

He was dying for a glass of wine. Or better yet, several. But since that time many years ago when he had been stopped by his colleagues Peters and Noren after having had one too many, he had been very careful. They had not said anything, but Wallander knew he had been so drunk that it could have meant immediate dismissal. It was one of the worst memories of his career. He didn’t want to risk anything like it again.

The waiter came to the table and took their order. Elvira ordered another glass of white wine.

Wallander felt self-conscious. Ever since he was a teenager he had been under the impression that he looked best in profile. Therefore he now turned his chair so that he sat sideways to the table.

“Don’t you have enough room for your feet?” she asked. “I can pull the table over, if you like?”

“Not at all,” Wallander said. “I’m fine.”

What the hell do I say now? he wondered. Do I tell her I fell in love with her from the moment I stepped in the door? Or rather, when I first read her letter?

“Have you ever done this before?” she asked.

“Never.”

“I have,” she said cheerfully. “But it’s never led to anything.”

Wallander noticed that she was very direct in her approach, in direct contrast to himself. He was still mostly concerned over whether or not to appear in profile.

“Why hasn’t it worked out before?”

“Wrong person, wrong sense of humor, wrong attitude, wrong expectations. Some have been pompous or had too many drinks. A lot can go wrong.”

“Perhaps I’ve already done something wrong, too?”

“You look nice enough,” she said.

“I think that’s a word that is only rarely applied to me,” he said. “But I guess I’m no ogre.”

At that moment he suddenly thought of the picture of Eva Persson that had been circulated in the press. Had she seen it? Did she know he was accused of assaulting a juvenile?

But the picture never came up in the conversation that ensued over the following hours. Wallander started to believe she hadn’t seen it. Perhaps she never read the evening papers. Wallander sat with his mineral water in front of him and longed for something stronger. She kept drinking wine. She asked him what it was like to be a policeman, and Wallander tried to answer her questions as truthfully as he could. But he noticed that he kept bringing up the more difficult aspects of his work, as if he was trying to elicit sympathy from her.

Her questions were well thought-out, sometimes even unexpected. He had to keep his wits about him in order to give her meaningful answers.

She told him about her own work. The shipping company she worked for did a lot of moving of household goods for Swedish missionaries who were either setting off abroad or coming home. He began to realize that she held a position of some responsibility, since her boss was often away on business. She clearly enjoyed her work.

The time flew by. Shortly after eleven, Wallander was in the middle of telling her about his failed marriage with Mona. She listened attentively, seriously but also supportively.

“And afterward?” she asked when his story trailed off. “You’ve been divorced for some time now. There must have been someone else.”

“I’ve been alone for long periods of time,” he said. “But for a while I was seeing a woman from Lettland, from Riga. Her name was Baiba. I had high hopes for the relationship and for a while I thought she shared those hopes. But it didn’t work out.”

“Why not?”

“She wanted to stay in Riga, and I wanted to stay here. I had made all kinds of plans. We were going to live in the country, start over.”

“Perhaps your dreams were too big,” she said. “You got burned.”

Wallander had the feeling that he had talked too much, that he had said too much about himself and perhaps even Mona and Baiba. But the woman across from him was easy to confide in.

Then she told him about herself. Her story was much the same as his, except that in her case it was two failed marriages rather than one. She had one child from the first marriage and one from the second. Without saying anything explicit, she gave Wallander the impression that her first husband had been physically abusive. Her second husband had been Argentinean, and she told Wallander with equal measures of insight and self-irony how his passionate nature, which at first had been a breath of fresh air, had finally become stifling.

“He disappeared two years ago,” she said. “The last I heard of him he was in Barcelona and had run out of money. I helped him get a ticket back to Argentina. Now I haven’t heard from him for a year. His daughter is distraught, of course.”

“How old are your kids?”

“Alexandra is nineteen, Tobias twenty-one.”

They paid their bill at half-past eleven. Wallander wanted to treat her, but she insisted on splitting it.

“It’s Friday tomorrow,” Wallander said once they were out on the street.

“I’ve never been to Ystad. Isn’t that funny?”

Wallander wanted to ask if he could call her. He didn’t really know what he was feeling, but she seemed not to have found too many faults in him yet. For now that was enough to be encouraged.

“I have a car,” she said. “I could even take the train. Do you have any time?”

“I’m in the middle of a difficult homicide case right now,” he said. “But I guess even policemen need occasional time off.”

She lived out in a Malmö suburb, toward Jagersro. Wallander offered to give her a ride, but she said she wanted to walk for a while and then take a taxi.

“I take as many long walks as I can,” she said. “I hate to jog.”

“Me too,” Wallander said.

But he said nothing about his diabetes, the reason he was now an avid walker.

They shook hands and said goodnight.

“It was nice to meet you,” she said.

“Yes,” Wallander said. “Likewise.”

He watched her until she had rounded the corner of the hotel. Then he walked over to his car and drove back toward Ystad. He put on a cassette tape of the tenor Jussi Björling. Music filled the car as he drove. As he passed the turn off to Stjarnsund, where Sten Widén’s ranch was, he thought that his normal sting of jealousy was not as strong now.

It was half past one by the time he parked the car. He walked up to his apartment and sat down on the sofa. It had been a long time since he had felt as happy as he did this evening. The last time must have been when he started to sense that Baiba reciprocated his feelings.

He went to bed without even thinking about the case.

For the first time in a long while, work had taken a back seat.

Wallander arrived at the station on Friday morning with explosive energy. The first thing he did was cancel the surveillance on Falk’s apartment on Apelbergsgatan. He did, however, want the surveillance at Runnerström Square to continue. Then he walked over to Martinsson’s office. It was empty. Hansson was also not in yet. But he bumped into Höglund in the hall. She looked unusually tired and grumpy. He thought he should say some encouraging words to her but couldn’t think of anything that would sound genuine.

“Sonja Hökberg’s phone book still hasn’t turned up,” she said. “The one she carried in her purse.”

“Have we established that she had one?”

“Eva Persson has corroborated Sonja’s mother’s claim. It was a small, dark-blue book with a rubber band around the middle.”

“Then we’re assuming that whoever killed her and tossed her handbag had first pocketed this book?”

“That seems plausible.”

“The question is what phone numbers were in there. And what names.”

Höglund shrugged. Wallander looked more closely at her.

“How are things with you, anyway?”

“Things are as they are,” she said. “But they sure as hell could be better.”

She went into her office and closed the door. Wallander hesitated but decided to knock on her door. When he heard her voice, he went in.

“We have some other things to talk about,” he said.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

He sat down. As usual, her office was perfectly neat.

“We have to sort out this business with the rape,” he said. “I haven’t spoken to Sonja’s mother yet. I have a meeting with Viktorsson at half past eight, but then I’m going to head over to their house. I take it she’s back from staying with her sister?”

“They’re planning the funeral. I think it’s very hard on them.”

Wallander got up.

“What’s going to happen to Eva Persson?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Even if she manages to lay the blame on Sonja, her life has been destroyed.”

Höglund made a face.

“I don’t know if I would go that far. Eva Persson seems like one of these people who can let everything wash over her and not let it affect her. How you get like that, I don’t know.”

Wallander thought about what she had said. Perhaps he would understand it better later.

“Have you seen Martinsson?” he asked as he was leaving.

“I saw him come in.”

“He wasn’t in his office.”

“I saw him go into Lisa’s office.”

“I didn’t think she ever came in this early.”

“They were having a meeting.”

Something in her voice made him stop. She saw his hesitation and seemed to make a decision. Then she gestured for him to come back inside and close the door.

“A meeting about what?”

“Sometimes you really surprise me,” she said. “You see and hear everything. You’re a great police officer and you know how to keep your investigative team motivated. But at the same time it’s as if you see nothing that’s going on around you.”

Wallander felt something cramp up in his gut. He didn’t say anything, he just waited for her to go on.

“You always speak well of Martinsson, and he always follows where you lead. You work well together.”

“I’m constantly worried that he’s going to get fed up and leave.”

“He won’t, believe me.”

“That’s what he always tells me. And it would be a shame. He is a good police officer.”

She looked squarely at him.

“I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I will anyway. You trust him way too much.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that he’s going behind your back. What do you think is going on in Lisa’s office right now? They may very well be talking about it being high time for some changes around here. Changes, I might add, that would be to your detriment rather than Martinsson’s.”

Wallander heard what she said but couldn’t believe it.

“How do you mean ‘going behind my back’?”

She threw her letter opener across her desk in an angry gesture.

“It took me a while to see it. Martinsson is smart. He’s manipulative, and good at it. He goes and complains to Lisa about the way you’re handling this investigation.”

“He tells her I’m incompetent?”

“I don’t think he would ever express himself so directly. He simply implies certain deficiencies. Weak leadership, strange priorities. He went straight to Lisa when you brought in Robert Modin, for example.”

Wallander was amazed.

“I can’t believe what you’re telling me.”

“You should. But I hope you understand that I’m telling you this in confidence.”

Wallander nodded. His stomach was hurting now.

“I just thought you should know. That’s all.”

Wallander looked at her.

“Do you agree with him?”

“If I did, I would tell you to your face. Not go behind your back.”

“What about Hansson? Nyberg?”

“This is Martinsson’s game. No one else’s. He’s going after the throne.”

“But what about his constant complaints about work? He doesn’t even know if he wants to stay in the force.”

“Aren’t you the one who’s always telling us to look past the surface to the very bottom? You always take Martinsson at face value. But I can tell you I’ve seen what’s underneath, and I don’t like what I see.”

Wallander felt almost paralyzed. The energy and joy he had felt when he woke up was gone. Somewhere inside him, anger was starting to bubble up.

“I’m going to get him for this,” he said. “I’m going to grab him right now and see what he has to say for himself.”

“That is not a good idea.”

“How am I supposed to keep working with someone like him?”

“I can’t tell you that. But you have to wait for a better opportunity to confront him. If you say anything now, you’ll just give him more reasons to complain about you being unbalanced. He also thinks that the slap you gave Eva Persson was no coincidence.”

“Maybe you know that Lisa is thinking of suspending me.”

“It wasn’t Lisa’s idea,” Höglund said grimly. “It was Martinsson.”

“How do you know all this?”

“He has a weakness,” she said. “He trusts me. He thinks I agree with him, even though I’ve told him I think he should stop going behind your back.”

Wallander got up from the chair.

“Don’t do anything rash,” she repeated. “Try to think of this information as having a leg up on him. Use it when the time comes.”

She was right.

Wallander went back to his office. His anger was tinted with sadness. He could have believed it about almost anyone, just not Martinsson. Not Martinsson.

He was interrupted in his thoughts by the phone. It was Viktorsson, calling to see where he was since he hadn’t shown up for the meeting. Wallander walked over to the district attorney’s office, nervous about running into Martinsson. But then he realized Martinsson had probably already left to be at Robert Modin’s side in Falk’s office.

The conversation with Viktorsson didn’t take long. Wallander forced himself to put all other thoughts aside and focused on the main events of the case. He told Viktorsson where they thought they were and what direction they were planning to take. Viktorsson asked a few questions but had no objection to what he had heard.

“What do you think you will find in Falk’s computer?”

“I don’t know. But I think it may help us clarify the issue of motive.”

“Did Falk commit any kind of a crime?”

“Not as far as we know.”

Viktorsson scratched his head.

“Do you know enough about these things? Shouldn’t experts from the National Police be stepping in here?”

“We have a local expert working on it for us. But we have decided to contact Stockholm.”

“I would urge you to do so as soon as possible. They can be touchy about these kinds of things. Who is this local expert?”

“His name is Robert Modin.”

“And he’s very good?”

“Better than most.”

Wallander realized he should tell Viktorsson the truth about Modin’s criminal past, but before he had gathered himself enough to do so, the moment was past. Wallander had in effect chosen to safeguard the investigation rather than himself. He had taken the first step on a path that could lead straight into personal disaster. Even if he escaped suspension for the business with Eva Persson, this could be the clincher. And Martinsson would have more than enough grounds to crush him.

“I take it you have been informed about the internal investigation that is now underway?” Viktorsson said abruptly. “The girl’s lawyer has filed a complaint with the Justice Department ombudsman as well as charging you with assault.”

“That picture tells a lie,” Wallander said. “Whatever anyone says, I was simply protecting the mother.”

Viktorsson didn’t say anything.

Is there anyone zuho believes me? Wallander thought. Anyone?

Wallander left the station at nine o’clock. He drove directly to the Hökbergs’ house. He had not called them in advance to notify them of his visit. The most important thing was to get away from the station for a while. He still felt it was too early to run into Martinsson. It would happen sooner or later, but right now he still didn’t trust his ability to control himself.

When he stepped out of his car the cell phone rang. It was Siv Eriksson.

“I’m sorry to have to bother you,” she said.

“No problem.”

“I’m calling because I need to talk to you.”

He suddenly could tell that she was upset. He pressed the phone closer to his ear and tried to turn out of the wind.

“Has anything happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. Please come as soon as possible.”

It must be urgent. He promised to drive over right away. The conversation with Sonja’s mother would have to wait. He drove back toward Ystad and parked in Lurendrejargrand. A wind from the east was bringing colder air into the region. Wallander pressed the bell to her apartment. She buzzed him in and came out to meet him on the landing. He saw that she was frightened. When they walked into the living room together, she stopped to light a cigarette. Her hands were shaking.

“What happened?” he asked.

It took a while for her to get the cigarette lit. She inhaled deeply, then put it out.

“I often go to see my mother,” she began. “She lives in Simrishamn, and I went to visit her yesterday. It got late and I decided to spend the night. When I got back this morning I saw what had happened.”

She interrupted herself and walked out into her study. Wallander followed her. She pointed to her computer.

“I had just sat down to work, but when I turned on the computer, nothing happened. At first I thought the computer had been unplugged, but then I realized what it was.”

She pointed to the screen.

“I don’t follow you,” Wallander said.

“Someone has deleted all my files,” she said. “My hard drive is completely empty. But it gets worse.”

She walked over to a cabinet and opened the doors.

“All of my backup disks are gone. Nothing is here. Nothing. I even have a reserve hard drive. That’s gone, too.”

Wallander looked around.

“So someone broke into your apartment last night.”

“But there are no signs of burglary. And how did they know I wasn’t going to be here last night?”

Wallander thought for a moment.

“Did you happen to leave a window open? Were there any marks on the front door?”

“No, I checked.”

“Does anyone else have the keys to your apartment?”

Her answer came slowly.

“Yes and no,” she said. “I gave Tynnes a set of spare keys.”

“Why did you do that?”

“So that he would have access to my apartment when I was away. In case anything happened. But he never used them as far as I know.”

Wallander nodded. He understood why she was so upset. Someone had used her spare keys to enter her apartment when she was away, and the only person who had had access to those keys was dead.

“Do you know where he kept them?”

“He said he was going to keep them in his apartment on Apelbergsgatan.”

Wallander nodded. He thought about the man who had tried to shoot him.

Perhaps he had finally been given the answer to what the man had been looking for.

The spare keys to Siv Eriksson’s apartment.

Chapter Thirty-One

For the first time since the beginning of the investigation, Wallander felt that he had a clear picture of what had happened.

After checking the front door and the windows of the apartment, he was convinced that Siv Eriksson was right. The person who had cleaned out her computer had used keys to enter her home. There was another conclusion he could also draw. Someone had been watching her and waiting for the right moment to strike.

They returned to the living room. She was still upset, and lit another cigarette that she also immediately put out. Wallander decided to wait a while before calling in Nyberg. There was something else he wanted to clarify first. He sat down across from her.

“Do you have any idea who might have done this?”

“No. It’s totally incomprehensible to me.”

“Your computer equipment must be quite valuable, but the burglar didn’t come for money. He wanted what was inside.”

“Everything is gone,” she repeated. “Everything. All my work. Even the hard drive I kept in reserve.”

“I imagine you must have used some kind of password to protect your work.”

“Of course I did.”

“But the burglar must have known what it was?”

“Or been able to get around it somehow.”

“Which means this was no ordinary burglar. It was someone who was very skilled with computers.”

She followed his train of thought now and understood where he was trying to go.

“I haven’t even been able to think that far,” she said. “I’ve been too distraught.”

“That’s understandable. What was your password?”

“‘Cookie.’ That was my nickname when I was a child.”

“Did anyone else know about it?”

“No.”

“What about Falk?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have it written down anywhere?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

She paused before she replied.

“Yes.”

Wallander sensed that they were homing in on a crucial point. He proceeded carefully.

“Did anyone else know about this nickname?”

“My mother, but she’s basically senile.”

“No one else?”

“I have a girlfriend who lives in Austria. She knows it.”

“Do you exchange letters with her?”

“Yes. But the past few years it’s been mainly e-mail.”

“Do you sign those with your nickname?”

“Yes.”

Wallander sat back and took a minute to think.

“I don’t know exactly how this works,” he said, “but I take it those letters are stored in your computer somewhere.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“So if someone accessed them they would have been able to see your nickname, and perhaps guessed it might have been used as a password.”

“That’s impossible. To gain access to my letters they would need the password up front. It can’t happen the other way around.”

“But someone did manage to break into your computer and delete your files,” Wallander said.

She shook her head obstinately.

“Why would anyone do that?” she said.

“You’re the only person who can answer that question. It’s an important question, as I hope you realize. What did you have in your computer that someone could have wanted?”

“I never worked with classified information.”

“This is very important. You have to think carefully.”

“You don’t have to remind me.”

Wallander waited. She looked as though she was thinking hard.

“There was nothing,” she said finally.

“Perhaps there was something there that you didn’t realize was valuable?”

“And what would that have been?”

“Again, only you can tell me that.”

Her voice was very firm when she answered him.

“I pride myself on keeping all areas of my life, particularly my work, in meticulous order,” she said. “I am constantly cleaning and sorting files. And I never worked on particularly advanced projects, I’ve already told you that.”

Wallander also thought hard before proceeding.

“Did Falk ever come over and use your computer?” he asked.

“Why would he do that?”

“I have to ask. Could he have come here without your knowledge? He had keys to your apartment.”

“I would have noticed it on the computer. It’s hard to explain without getting too technical.”

“I see. But Falk was very good at these things. Isn’t it possible that he could have erased all traces of his activities? It’s always a question of who is better at staying a step ahead — the intruder or the investigator.”

“I still don’t see what the point would be of him using my computer.”

“Maybe he wanted to hide something. The cuckoo hides his eggs in other birds’ nests.”

“But why?”

“We don’t know why. It may also simply be that someone thought he hid something here. And now that Falk is dead, they need to make sure there isn’t something here that you would eventually discover.”

“Who would these people be?”

“That’s what I want to know.”

This is what must have happened, Wallander thought. There is no other reasonable explanation. There’s a lot of frenetic cleaning going on around this town. Something needs to be kept secret at any cost.

He repeated the words in his head. Something needs to be kept secret at any cost. That was the case in a nutshell. If only they could find the secret, the case would solve itself.

Wallander sensed that he was running out of time.

“Did Falk ever mention the number twenty?” he asked.

“Why is that important?”

“Just answer the question, please.”

“Not as far as I remember.”

Wallander got out his cell phone and called Nyberg. There was no answer. He called Irene and asked her to find him.

Siv Eriksson escorted him to the door.

“I’ll be sending over a forensic team,” he said. “I’d be grateful if you could avoid touching anything in your study. They might find some fingerprints.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said desperately. “Everything is gone. My whole career has vanished overnight.”

Wallander didn’t know how to comfort her. He recalled Erik Hökberg’s words about society’s vulnerability.

“Was Falk a religious man?” he asked.

Her surprise was genuine.

“He never said anything that would suggest such a thing.” Wallander had no more questions. He promised to be in touch. When he came out on the street he was at a loss. The person he most needed to talk to was Martinsson, but the question was if he should take Höglund’s advice. He wanted to confront him with what she had told him. Then he was overcome by fatigue. The betrayal was so hurtful and unexpected. He still had trouble accepting it, but deep down he knew it must be true.

Since it was still early, he decided to wait. Hopefully his anger would subside over the course of the day. First he would pay a visit to the Hökbergs. Just then he remembered something that he had forgotten to do. He drove to the video store that had been closed when he visited it last, went in, and rented the movie with Al Pacino that he wanted to see. He then continued on to the Hökberg house and stopped outside. Just as he was about to ring the bell, the door opened.

“I saw you pull up,” Erik Hökberg said. “You were also here about an hour ago, but you didn’t come in that time.”

“Something else came up that I had to attend to.”

They went inside. The house was quiet.

“I actually came to speak to your wife.”

“She’s resting in the bedroom upstairs. Or crying. Or both.”

Erik Hökberg’s face was ashen. His eyes were bloodshot.

“My son is back in school,” he said. “I think it’s the best thing for him.”

“We still don’t know who killed Sonja,” Wallander said. “But we’re optimistic that we’re closing in on whoever is responsible.”

“I always considered myself against the death penalty,” Hökberg said. “But I don’t know about that anymore. Just promise not to let me get close to whoever did this. I don’t know what I would do to him.”

Wallander promised, and Hökberg went upstairs to get his wife. Wallander walked around the living room while he waited. The silence was oppressive. It took about a quarter of an hour, then he heard footsteps on the stairs. Hökberg came down alone.

“She’s very tired,” he said. “But she’ll be down shortly.”

“I’m sorry that this conversation can’t wait.”

“Both she and I understand.”

They waited for her in silence. Then she turned up, barefoot and wearing black. Beside her husband she looked very small. Wallander shook her hand and expressed his condolences. She wobbled slightly then sat down. She reminded Wallander of Anette Fredman. Here was yet another mother who had lost a child. When he looked at her, he wondered how many times he had found himself in this situation. He was going to have to ask questions that were the equivalent of pouring salt in already painful wounds.

This situation was perhaps even worse than many of the others. Sonja Hökberg had not only been killed. Now he was about to confront them with the idea that she may also have been raped on an earlier occasion.

He groped around for a way to begin.

“In order to find Sonja’s killer, we have delved into the past. There is a particular incident that has come to our attention and that we need some more information about. You are probably the only people who can tell us about it.”

Both Hökberg and his wife regarded him intently.

“Let’s look back about three years,” Wallander said. “Sometime in 1994 or 1995. Can you remember anything unusual that happened to Sonja during that time?”

Ruth, Sonja’s mother, spoke very quietly. Wallander had to lean forward to catch her words.

“What kind of thing are you looking for?”

“Did she ever come home looking as if she had been involved in an accident? Did she have unexplained bruises?”

“She broke her ankle once.”

“Sprained,” Erik Hökberg said. “She didn’t break her ankle. She sprained her ankle.”

“I’m thinking more of bruises on her face and body. Did that ever happen?”

Ruth Hökberg jumped in abruptly.

“My daughter was never naked in the house.”

“She may have been unusually upset or depressed during this time,” Wallander continued.

“She was a moody girl.”

“So neither one of you can think of anything unusual along these lines?”

“I don’t even understand why you’re asking these questions.”

“He has to,” Erik Hökberg said. “It’s his job.”

Wallander was grateful for this.

“I can’t ever recall her coming home with bruises.”

Wallander decided he couldn’t keep going around in circles.

“We have some information to indicate that Sonja was raped at some point during this time. But she never reported it.”

Ruth flinched as if she had been burned.

“It’s not true.”

“Did she ever speak of it?”

“That she had been raped? Never.”

She started laughing helplessly.

“Who said this? It’s a lie. It’s nothing other than a lie.”

Wallander had the feeling that she was withholding something. Perhaps she had suspected something of the kind. Her objections were forced.

“The information we have is quite compelling.”

“Says who? Who is spreading these lies about Sonja?”

“Unfortunately I cannot reveal our sources.”

“Why not?”

Erik Hökberg had jumped back into the conversation.

“It’s standard practice during investigations of this nature.”

“Why?”

“For now it has to do with making sure the informant remains protected.”

“What about my daughter?” Ruth screamed. “Who is protecting her? No one! She’s dead!”

The situation was getting out of hand. Wallander regretted not letting Höglund handle this questioning. Erik calmed his wife, who had started to sob. It was a horrible scene.

After a while he continued asking questions.

“She never talked about having been raped?”

“Never.”

“And neither one of you noticed anything unusual in her behavior?”

“She was a hard person to gauge.”

“In what way?”

“She kept to herself. She was often in a bad mood, which I guess is normal for teenagers.”

“Was she angry with you?”

“It was mostly directed toward her younger brother.”

Wallander thought back to the only conversation he had ever had with Sonja. She had complained then about the fact that her younger brother always got into her things.

“Let’s go back to the years 1994 and 1995,” Wallander said. “She had returned from England. Did you notice anything at that time? Any sudden change?”

Erik jumped out of his chair so violently that it fell backward.

“She came home one night with bleeding from her mouth and her nose. It was in February of 1995. We asked her what had happened but she wouldn’t say. Her clothes were dirty and she was in shock. We never found out what happened. She said she had fallen down. Of course it was a lie. Now I realize that, now that you come here and tell us she was raped. Why do we have to keep lying about this?”

Ruth started crying again. She tried to say something, but Wallander couldn’t tell what it was. Erik gestured for him to follow him into the study.

“You won’t get anything else out of her for now.”

“I only have a few more questions.”

“Do you know who raped her?”

“No.”

“But you suspect someone?”

“Yes. But I can’t give you any names.”

“Was he the same person who killed her?”

“I doubt it. But it may still help clarify the events that led to her death.”

Hökberg was silent.

“It was toward the end of February,” he said after a pause. “It snowed all day. By evening everything was white. And she came home bleeding. The following day you could still see her blood on the snow.”

Suddenly it was as if he was overcome by the same helplessness as his wife crying in the room next door.

“You have to get him. A person who can do something like this deserves whatever’s coming to him.”

“We will do what we can,” Wallander answered. “We will get the person who is responsible, but we need your help.”

“You have to understand my wife,” Hökberg said. “She’s lost her daughter. How is she supposed to react to the news that Sonja was also raped?”

Wallander understood.

“So it was the end of February, 1995. Do you remember anything else? Did she have a boyfriend at the time?”

“We never knew who she associated with.”

“Did any cars ever stop outside the house? Did you ever see her with a man?”

Anger flashed in Hökberg’s eyes.

“A man? I thought you were talking about boyfriends?”

“That’s what I meant.”

“It was a grown man who did this to her?”

“I’ve already said I can’t give you any information.”

Hökberg lifted his hands defensively.

“I’ve told you everything I know. I should get back to my wife.”

“Before I leave I’d like to take a look around Sonja’s room again.”

“You’ll find it the way it was last time. We haven’t changed anything.”

Hökberg went into the living room and Wallander went upstairs. When he walked into Sonja’s room he was struck by the same feeling he’d had the first time. It was not the room of a grown woman. He opened the door to the closet to look at the movie poster. It was still there. The Devil’s Advocate. Who is the Devil? he thought. Tynnes Falk worshipped his own image. And Sonja Hökberg has a picture of the devil in her closet. But he had never heard rumors of Satan-worshippers in Ystad.

He closed the closet door and was about to leave when a boy turned up in the doorway.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

Wallander told him who he was. The boy regarded him suspiciously. “If you’re police you should be able to get the guy who killed my sister.”

“We’re trying,” Wallander answered.

The boy didn’t move. Wallander couldn’t decide if he seemed scared or simply curious.

“You’re Emil, aren’t you?”

The boy didn’t answer.

“You must have liked your sister.”

“Sometimes.”

“Only sometimes?”

“Isn’t that enough? Do you have to like people all the time?”

“No, you don’t.”

Wallander smiled. The boy didn’t smile back.

“I think I know one time when you liked her,” Wallander said.

“When?”

“A couple of years ago. She came home and was hurt.”

The boy shifted.

“How do you know that?”

“I’m a policeman,” Wallander said. “I have to know. Did she ever tell you what happened?”

“No. But someone hit her.”

“How do you know that if she didn’t tell you?”

“I won’t tell you.”

Wallander thought hard about how to proceed. If he pushed too much, the boy might stop talking completely.

“You asked me just now if I was going to find the guy who killed your sister. But if I’m going to be able to do that, I need your help. The best thing you can do right now is tell me how you know that someone hit her.”

“She made a drawing.”

“She drew?”

“She was good at it, but she never showed it to anyone. She drew pictures and then tore them up. But I went into her room sometimes when she wasn’t here.”

“And you found something?”

“She drew a picture of what happened.”

“Did she say that?”

“Why else would she draw a picture of a guy hitting her in the nose?”

“Do you still have that picture?”

The boy didn’t answer. He left the room. After a few minutes he came back with a pencil drawing in his hand.

“I want it back.”

“I promise.”

Wallander took the picture over to the window. It was a disturbing picture. He saw that Sonja Hökberg was good at drawing. He recognized her face. But it was the man who dominated the picture. His face loomed over her and his fist hit her nose. Wallander studied his face. If it was as accurate as her self-portrait they should be able to identify the man from this drawing. Something on the man’s wrist also caught his attention. At first he thought it was a bracelet. Then he realized it was a tattoo.

Wallander was suddenly in a hurry.

“You did the right thing when you kept this drawing,” he told the boy. “I promise you’ll get it back.”

The boy followed him down the stairs. Wallander carefully folded the drawing and put it in his inner pocket. There were still sobs coming from the living room.

“Is she always going to be like that?” the boy asked.

Wallander suddenly felt a lump in his throat.

“It will take time,” he said. “But it will get better. Sometime.”

Wallander didn’t go in to the adults. He stroked the boy’s head and carefully closed the front door behind him.

Wallander tried to reach Höglund on his cell phone, but she didn’t answer. He called Irene, who told him that Höglund had been forced to go home. One of her kids was sick. Wallander didn’t have to think twice. He drove to the house on Rotfruktsgatan where she lived. It had started to rain. He folded his arms over his chest to make sure no rain would penetrate his coat and reach the drawing inside his pocket. Höglund opened the front door with a child on her arm.

“I wouldn’t have bothered you if it wasn’t important,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “She just has a low-grade fever. My neighbor can’t take her until later in the day.”

Wallander went in. It had been a while since he was last there. When he stepped into the living room, he saw that the Japanese masks had disappeared from the wall. She followed his gaze.

“He took his travel mementos with him,” she said.

“Does he still live in town?”

“He moved to Malmö.”

“Are you going to stay here?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I can afford it.”

The girl in her arms was almost asleep. Höglund softly put her down on the couch.

“In a moment I’m going to show you a drawing,” Wallander said. “But first I need to ask you something about Carl-Einar Lundberg. I know you haven’t met him, but you’ve seen pictures of him and read through the case files on him. Can you recall if there was any mention of a tattoo?”

She didn’t need time to think.

“He had a snake design on his right wrist.”

Wallander smacked his hand down on the coffee table. The child jerked and started to cry, but soon stopped and returned to sleep. At last they had arrived at a conclusion that held water. He took the drawing out and showed it to her.

“That’s Carl-Einar. Without a doubt. How did you get hold of it?”

Wallander told her about his encounter with Emil, and about learning of Sonja’s hidden talent for drawing.

“I doubt we’ll ever be able to prosecute him for this,” Wallander said. “But that’s not the most important thing right now. What we’ve done is prove your theory. You were right. It’s no longer simply a working hypothesis.”

“I still find it hard to believe that she would kill his father.”

“Keep in mind that there may be other factors we still don’t know about. But now we can lean on Lundberg and see what we get. We’re going to assume she killed his father out of revenge. And Eva Persson may be telling the truth when she said that Sonja was the one who did both the stabbing and the hitting. Eva Persson is a riddle unto herself that we’ll have to attend to later.”

They both thought for a moment about the new developments. Finally Wallander broke the silence.

“Someone became worried that Sonja was going to tell us something. So we have three questions we need answers to: What was it she knew? What did it have to do with Falk? Who was the person who became worried?”

The girl on the sofa started to whimper. Wallander took that as his cue.

“Have you seen Martinsson since this morning?” she asked.

“No, but I’m going over there now. Don’t worry, I’m planning to take your advice. I won’t say anything.”

Wallander left the house and hurried to his car.

He drove down to Runnerström Square in the pouring rain.

He stayed in his car for a long time, trying to summon all his energy.

Then he walked into the building to face Martinsson.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Martinsson greeted Wallander at the door with his widest smile.

“I’ve been trying to call you,” he said. “Things are happening.”

Wallander had opened the door to Falk’s office with a great deal of pent-up aggression in his body. He was itching to punch Martinsson in the face. How could he have done this to him? But Martinsson smiled and immediately led the conversation to the latest news about Falk’s computer. Wallander realized he was somewhat relieved. It gave him breathing space. There would be time enough for him to have it out with Martinsson later. And Martinsson’s smile gave him pause. What if Höglund had misunderstood Martinsson’s intentions? Martinsson may have had other reasons to consult with Holgersson. Höglund may also have taken some of his comments the wrong way.

But in his heart he knew she was right. Höglund had not exaggerated the situation. She had said what she did because she was also upset by it.

Wallander walked around the table to say hello to Modin.

“Tell me what’s happened,” he said.

“Robert is breaking through one layer of defense after another,” Martinsson said with satisfaction. “We’re getting deeper and deeper into the strange and fascinating world inside Falk’s computer.”

Martinsson offered Wallander the folding chair, but he declined. Martinsson checked his notes while Modin took a sip of what looked like carrot juice.

“We’ve identified another four institutions in Falk’s network. The first is the National Bank of Indonesia. Don’t ask me how Robert managed to confirm that. He’s a wizard when it comes to getting around security.”

Martinsson kept flipping the pages.

“Then there’s a bank in Liechtenstein called Lyder Bank. It gets somewhat harder after this. If we’re right, then the next two companies are a French telecommunications firm and a commercial satellite company in Atlanta.”

Wallander furrowed his brow.

“What do you make of it?”

“The thought from before that it’s all about money still stands, as far as I’m concerned. But we’re not sure how the telecom company or the Atlanta satellites are involved.”

“Nothing is here by coincidence,” Modin said abruptly. Wallander turned toward him.

“Try to explain it to me in a way that I’ll understand.”

“Everyone arranges their bookshelf in their own way. Or their folders, or whatever. After a while you learn to see people’s patterns, even in their computers. The person who worked on this one was very deliberate. Everything is tidy. There’s nothing superfluous. But it also isn’t arranged in any mundane way following the alphabet or numerical sequences.”

Wallander interrupted him.

“Say that again.”

“Well, usually people arrange things alphabetically or according to some numerical sequence. A comes before B comes before C. One comes before two and five before seven. But here there isn’t any of that.”

“What’s the pattern, then?”

“Something else entirely.”

Wallander tried to sense where Modin was going.

“You see another kind of pattern?”

Modin nodded and pointed to the screen. Wallander and Martinsson leaned forward.

“Two components turn up repeatedly,” Modin continued. “The first one I discovered was the number twenty. I tried to see what would happen if I added a few zeroes or changed the order around. If I do that, something interesting happens.”

He pointed to the digits on the screen: a two and a zero.

“See what happens when I do this.”

Modin typed something and the numbers were highlighted. Then they disappeared.

“They’re like frightened animals that run and hide,” Modin said. “It’s as if I were shining a bright light on them. Then they rush back into the darkness. But after a while they come out again, and always in the same place.”

“So how do you interpret this?”

“That they’re important somehow. There’s also another component that behaves in this way.”

Modin pointed to the screen again, this time to the initials “JM.”

“They do the same thing,” he said. “If you try to home in on them, they disappear.”

Wallander nodded.

“They turn up all the time,” Martinsson said. “Every time we identify a new institution on the list, they’re there. But Robert has also found something else.”

Wallander stopped them so he could polish his glasses.

“If you leave them alone,” Modin said, “you start to see after a while that they move around.”

He pointed to the screen again.

“The first company we identified was the first on the list,” he said.

“And here the nocturnals are at the top of the column.”

“‘Nocturnals’?”

“That’s what we call them,” Martinsson said. “We thought it was a fitting name.”

“Keep going.”

“The second item we managed to identify lay a bit farther down on the list in the second column. Here the nocturnals have moved to the right and lower down. If you continue through the list, you’ll see that they move according to a strict pattern. They move down toward the lower right-hand corner.”

Wallander stretched out his back.

“This still doesn’t tell us what they’re doing.”

“We’re not quite done,” Martinsson said. “Now is when it gets really interesting.”

“I’ve found a time element,” Modin said. “The nocturnals change their coordinates with time. That means there’s an invisible timekeeper in here somewhere. I amused myself by constructing a calculation. If you assume that the upper left corner is zero, and that there are seventy-four identities in the network, and that the number twenty refers to the twentieth of October, then you see the following.”

Modin typed away until a new text emerged on the screen. Wallander read the name of the satellite company in Atlanta. Modin pointed to the last two components.

“This is number four from the end,” he said. “And today is the seventeenth of October.”

Wallander nodded slowly.

“You mean the pattern will reach some sort of high point on Monday? That the twentieth represents some kind of end point for these nocturnals?”

“It seems possible.”

“But what about the other component? This ‘JM’? What does it mean if we take the twenty to refer to the date?”

No one had an answer to that question. Wallander continued.

“What happens on Monday the twentieth of October?”

“I don’t know. But I can tell you that some kind of countdown is underway.”

“Maybe we should just pull the plug.”

“It wouldn’t help, since this is just a monitor,” Martinsson pointed out. “We can’t see the network clearly and we don’t know if one or more servers are involved.”

“Let’s assume the countdown is for a bomb of some kind,” Wallander said. “Where is it actually being controlled, if not from here?”

“We don’t know.”

Wallander suddenly had the feeling they were on the wrong track. Was he misguided in his assumption that the answer to the whole case lay in Falk’s computer? Wallander hesitated. The doubt that had come over him was very strong.

“We have to rethink this,” he said. “From the beginning.”

Martinsson looked shocked.

“Do you want us to stop?”

“I mean we have to rethink this. There have been some developments you aren’t aware of.”

They walked out onto the landing. Wallander told him about Carl-Einar Lundberg. He felt uncomfortable in Martinsson’s presence now, but he tried to hide his feelings.

“We should move Sonja Hökberg’s role out of the center,” he concluded. “I’m convinced now that someone was simply afraid of what she could tell us.”

“And how do you explain Landahl’s death?”

“They had been in a relationship. Perhaps she had told him what she knew, and in some way this had to do with Falk.”

He also told him what had happened in Siv Eriksson’s apartment.

“But that seems to contradict our ideas,” Martinsson said.

“But we still can’t explain why the electrical relay turned up in the morgue, or the fact that Falk’s body was removed. There’s an air of desperation in all of this, combined with an extreme ruthlessness. Why do people behave in this way?”

Martinsson thought it over.

“Maybe they’re fanatics,” he said. “The only thing that matters to them is what they believe in.”

Wallander gestured toward Falk’s office.

“Robert Modin has done a great job, but the time has come for us to bring in experts from the National Police cybercrimes division. We can’t take any risks regarding a countdown to Monday.”

“So Robert is done here?”

“Yes. I want you to contact Stockholm immediately. Try to get someone down here today.”

“But it’s Friday.”

“I don’t care. Monday is just around the corner.”

They went back in. Wallander congratulated Modin on his excellent work and told him he was no longer needed. Modin was clearly disappointed but didn’t say anything. He simply turned back to the computer to finish up.

Both Wallander and Martinsson turned their backs to him and started discussing the matter of his compensation in low tones. Wallander said he would take this on.

Neither one of them noticed the fact that Modin had quickly copied the remaining material onto his computer.

They said good-bye outside in the rain. Martinsson was going to drive Modin back to his home.

Wallander shook his hand and thanked him.

Then he drove down to the police station. He thought about the fact that Elvira Lindfeldt was coming up from Malmö to see him that evening. He was both excited and nervous. But before then, he had to meet with the others about rethinking the case. Sonja’s rape had dramatically altered the significance of certain events.

When Wallander stepped in through the front doors, he saw that someone was waiting in the reception area. The man came over and introduced himself as Rolf Stenius. The name was familiar to Wallander, but he couldn’t place it until the man explained that he was Falk’s accountant.

“I should have called you before coming down here,” Stenius said. “But I happened to be in town for another meeting and thought perhaps I could drop in.”

“Unfortunately it’s not a good time,” Wallander said. “I can only spare a couple of minutes.”

They went to his office. Rolf Stenius was a gaunt man about his own age with thinning hair. Wallander remembered seeing in a memo that Hansson had been in contact with him. Stenius took out a plastic folder from his briefcase.

“I had already been informed of Falk’s death when the police contacted me.”

“Who told you about it?”

“Falk’s ex-wife.”

Wallander nodded for him to continue.

“I’ve made a spreadsheet for you covering the past two years, as well as including other things that may be of interest to you.”

Wallander accepted the plastic folder without looking at it.

“Was Falk a rich man?” he asked.

“That depends on what you mean by rich. He had about ten million kronor.”

“Then he was rich in my book. Did he have any outstanding debt?”

“Nothing of any consequence. His operating costs were also quite low,” Stenius said.

“His income came from his various consulting projects. Is that correct?”

“I’ve provided you with all this information in the folder.”

“Was there any one project that was significantly more lucrative than the others?” Wallander asked.

“Some of his projects in the U.S. paid very well, but nothing unusual.”

“What kind of projects were those?”

“Among other things, he worked for a national advertising chain. Apparently he helped improve their graphic design program.”

“And what else?”

“He worked for a whiskey importer by the name of DuPont. He made some kind of advanced warehouse storage program.”

Wallander tried to gather his thoughts.

“Did his accumulation of wealth increase less rapidly in the past year?”

“I don’t think one could say that. He always made wise investments and never put his eggs in one basket. He had money in Swedish, Scandinavian, and American funds. He always kept a good amount of cash on hand, and then he invested in several reputable companies. Ericsson, for example.”

“Who handled his stock-market account?”

“He did that himself, mostly.”

“Did he have any interests in Angola?”

“Where did you say?”

“Angola,” Wallander repeated.

“Not that I know of.”

“Could he have had such interests without you knowing about it?”

“Of course. But I doubt it. Falk was a very honest man. He felt strongly about paying his share of taxes. When I suggested he think about moving his assets abroad in order to achieve a more favorable tax rate, he became very upset.”

“What did he do?”

“He threatened to get a new accountant.”

Wallander felt tired.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll look through these papers as soon as I have the chance.”

“It’s a sad affair,” Stenius said and closed his briefcase. “Falk was a good man. Overly reserved, perhaps, but amiable.”

Wallander escorted him back to the reception area.

“An incorporated company always has a board of directors,” he said.

“Who was on it?”

“Falk, of course. My boss, and my secretary.”

“And you held regular meetings?”

“I took care of most of the business over the phone.”

“So the board doesn’t have to meet in person?”

“It’s often enough to circulate documents and have people sign them on their own time.”

Stenius left the station, unfolding his umbrella as he walked outside. Wallander returned to his office and wondered if anyone had had a chance to speak to Falk’s children. We don’t even have time for the most important tasks, he thought. Even though we’re working ourselves to the bone. The Swedish justice system is degenerating into a crumbling warehouse of unsolved cases.

At three-thirty, the investigative team gathered for a meeting. Höglund relayed Nyberg’s apologies — he was suffering from vertigo. They speculated gloomily about which of them would be the first to suffer a heart attack. Then they launched directly into the discussion about Sonja Hökberg’s rape and its possible consequences for the case. Wallander demanded that Carl-Einar Lundberg be brought in for questioning as soon as possible and looked over to Viktorsson, who nodded his assent. Wallander also asked Höglund to find out if Lundberg senior had been involved in any way.

“You think he had been after her, too?” Hansson exclaimed. “What kind of a family was that?”

“We have to know the facts,” Wallander said. “We can’t afford any gaps.”

“I have trouble accepting the theory of a revenge by proxy,” Martinsson said. “I’m sorry, but that just seems too farfetched to me.”

“We’re not discussing how we feel about these things,” Wallander said. “We’re talking about facts.”

His voice was sharper than he intended. He saw that the others around the table had noticed it. He hurried on in a friendlier tone.

“What about the National Police and their cybercrime experts? What did they say?”

“Well, they whined when I insisted that someone come down immediately. But someone will be here by nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“Does this someone have a name?”

“His name is actually Hans Alfredsson.”

Everyone burst out laughing. Hans, or rather Hasse, Alfredsson was a legendary Swedish comedian. Martinsson volunteered to meet his plane at Sturup.

“Do you think you’ll be able to show him what’s been done so far?” Wallander asked.

“Yes. I made plenty of notes while Modin was working.”

They finished the meeting by talking about Jonas Landahl. Hansson had been allotted the unpleasant task of getting in touch with his parents. They had been in Corsica and were now on their way home. Nyberg had sent Höglund a memo in which he stated that Sonja Hökberg had indeed been in Landahl’s car, and that the car had been at the substation that night. They now also knew that Landahl had no previous criminal record, but that didn’t mean that he hadn’t been involved in releasing the minks at the farm in Solvesborg, where Falk was apprehended.

It was almost six o’clock. Wallander felt they were not going to get any further and ended the meeting. They would meet again on Saturday. Wallander was now in a hurry. He needed to clean the apartment and get himself ready before Elvira arrived. But he walked by his office and called Nyberg. It took so long for him to answer that Wallander was starting to get worried. Finally he answered, furious as usual, and Wallander was able to relax. Nyberg said he was feeling better and would be back at work the following day.

Wallander had just managed to tidy up in his apartment and change his clothes when the phone rang. Elvira was on her way to Ystad and was calling from her car. She had just passed the exit to Sturup. Wallander had booked a table at a fancy Ystad restaurant. He gave her the directions to the main square, where they arranged to meet. He put the receiver down so clumsily that it fell to the floor. He picked it up again, cursing, while he suddenly remembered that he and Linda had agreed to talk on the phone this evening. After an internal debate he decided to leave the number of the restaurant on his answering machine for anyone who wanted to reach him. There was a chance that a journalist would call, but he decided it was only a small one. Right now public interest in the scandal seemed to be low.

Then he left the apartment. He left the car at home and walked. It had stopped raining and the wind had also died down. Deep inside Wallander felt a twinge of disappointment over the fact that she had decided to take the car and not the train. He wondered if she had been afraid of missing the last train and being stuck in an awkward situation with him. But there was no point in speculating. He concentrated on the fact that for once he was going to have the pleasure of dining with a beautiful woman.

He stopped outside the bookstore on the main square and waited. After about five minutes he saw her come walking along Hamngatan. He felt suddenly shy, and was baffled by her directness. While they were walking up Norregatan to the restaurant, he felt her take his arm. It was just as they were passing the building where Svedberg had lived. Wallander stopped and told her about what had happened there that time. She listened attentively.

“How do you think about it now?” she asked when he had finished.

“I don’t know. Like a bad dream. Something I’m not convinced actually happened.”

The restaurant was small and had only been open about a year. Wallander had never been there, but Linda had recommended it. Wallander had been expecting it to be full, but only a few tables were taken.

“Ystad is hardly a bustling metropolis,” he said as an excuse. “But the food is supposed to be good.”

A waitress that Wallander recognized from the Continental Hotel showed them to their table.

“You took the car,” Wallander said as he studied the wine list.

“Yes, I’m planning to drive back after we’re done.”

“Then I’ll be having the wine today.”

“What do the police say about blood alcohol levels?”

“That it’s best not to have any alcohol at all if you’re planning to drive. But I think one glass is fine with a meal. If you like we can go up to the station after dinner and give you a sobriety test.”

The food was excellent. Wallander finished his first glass of wine and pretended to hesitate before ordering another. The conversation so far had been mainly about his work. For once he was enjoying it. He told her how he had been a rookie cop in Malmö and almost been stabbed to death. She asked him about the cases he was currently involved in and he became more and more convinced she knew nothing about the picture in the paper. He told her about the strange death at the power substation, the man who had been found outside the ATM, and the boy who had been thrown between the propeller axles on the ferry from Poland.

They had just ordered coffee when the door to the restaurant opened.

Robert Modin walked in.

Wallander spotted him immediately. When Modin saw that Wallander was not alone he seemed to hesitate, but Wallander gestured for him to come over. He introduced Modin to Elvira. Wallander saw that he looked worried. He wondered what had happened.

“I think I’ve found something,” Modin said.

“If you would like to speak privately, I can leave,” Elvira said.

“There’s no need.”

“I asked my dad to drive me out from Löderup,” Modin said. “I found out where you were from your answering machine.”

“You said you thought you had something?”

“It’s hard to explain without the computer in front of me, but I think I’ve managed to crack the last codes.”

Modin looked sure of himself.

“Call Martinsson tomorrow,” Wallander said. “I’ll inform him in advance of this development.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m right.”

“There was no need for you to come out here in person,” Wallander said. “You could have called me.”

“I get a little carried away sometimes.”

Modin nodded nervously in Elvira’s direction. Wallander thought he should ask him more closely about the new breakthrough, but decided it could wait until the next day. He wanted to be left alone right now. Modin understood. He walked out again. The conversation had taken two minutes.

“He’s a very talented young man,” Wallander said as he left. “He’s a computer whiz and he’s helping us with part of our investigation.”

Elvira smiled.

“He seemed like a nervous type. But I’m sure he’s very good at what he does.”

They left the restaurant around midnight and walked slowly back toward the main square. Her car was parked on Hamngatan.

“I’ve had a wonderful time,” she said when they said good-bye.

“You’re not tired of me yet?”

“No. What about you?”

Wallander wanted her to stay longer, but realized he had to let her go. They said they would talk again over the weekend.

He gave her a hug. She left. Wallander walked home. Suddenly he stopped in the middle of the street. Is it possible? he thought. Have I really met someone?

He continued on to Mariagatan and fell asleep shortly after one o’clock.

Elvira Lindfeldt drove to Malmö through the darkness. Shortly before Rydsgard she pulled into a parking lot by the side of the highway. She got out her cell phone.

The number she dialed was registered to a person in Luanda.

She tried three times before she was put through. It was not a good connection. When Carter answered, she got right to the point.

“Fu Cheng was right. The person who is killing our system is named Robert Modin. He lives in a village outside Ystad called Löderup.”

She repeated her statement twice, and then she was sure that he had understood what she had said.

The connection was broken.

Elvira swung back onto the highway and continued on to Malmö.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Wallander called Linda on Saturday morning.

He had woken up at dawn but had managed to fall back to sleep and not get up until shortly after eight. When he had finished breakfast he called her apartment in Stockholm. He woke her up. She immediately asked him why he hadn’t been at home the evening before. She had tried to call the number he had left on the answering machine twice but it had been busy both times. Wallander decided to tell her the truth. She listened without interrupting him.

“I never would have thought it,” she said when he was done. “I would never have thought you had enough brains in your head to follow my advice for once.”

“I had my doubts.”

“But not anymore?”

She asked about Elvira Lindfeldt and they talked for a long time. She was very happy for him, though he kept trying to play it down. It was too early, in his opinion. For now it was enough not to have spent another Friday night alone.

“That’s not true,” she objected. “I know you. You’re hoping this is going to turn out to be the real thing. So do I.”

Then she changed the subject.

“I want you to know that I saw that picture in the paper. It was a bit of a shock. Someone at the restaurant showed it to me and asked if that was my dad.”

“What did you say?”

“I thought about saying no, but I didn’t.”

“That was nice of you.”

“I just decided it couldn’t be true.”

“It’s not.”

He told her what had actually happened, and about the internal investigation that was underway. He told her he was confident the truth would come out.

“It’s important for me to hear this right now,” she said.

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you why. Not yet.”

Wallander’s curiosity was piqued. During the past few months, he had begun to suspect that Linda’s plans for the future had taken a new turn. But in what direction he had no idea, and she had always changed the subject.

They ended their conversation by talking about when she was coming to Ystad next. She thought she could make it in the middle of November, but not before.

Wallander put the phone down and wondered if she would ever get a real job and try to settle down in Ystad.

She’s got something on her mind, he thought. But for some reason she won’t tell me what it is.

It was senseless to try to figure it out. He looked at the time. It was twenty minutes past eight. Martinsson would soon be picking up the cybercrime expert named Alfredsson from Stockholm. Wallander thought about how Modin had turned up so unexpectedly at the restaurant the night before. He had seemed very sure of his discovery. Wallander should let Martinsson know. Something inside Wallander, however, resisted having more contact with Martinsson than absolutely necessary. He still had lingering doubts about what Höglund had told him. He knew these doubts were caused mainly because he wanted it to be untrue. To lose Martinsson as a trusted friend would create an impossible work environment. The betrayal would be too hard to bear. He felt he had trained Martinsson the way Rydberg had trained him, but Wallander had never been tempted — had never wanted — to overthrow Rydberg’s authority.

The force is a wasp’s nest, he thought angrily. Nothing but envy, gossip, and intrigue. I’ve always liked to imagine that I remained above it all, but now it seems I’ve been pulled into the very center. I’m a ruler whose successor is getting impatient.

Despite his resistance, he made himself call Martinsson’s cell phone. After all, Modin had forced his father to drive him in all the way from Löderup the night before. They had to take him seriously. He may have already been in touch with Martinsson, but if not, Wallander’s call could be important. Martinsson picked up immediately. He had just parked the car and was on his way to the terminal. Modin had not contacted him. Wallander briefly explained the situation.

“It seems a little strange,” Martinsson said. “How could he have thought of this when he didn’t have access to the computer anymore?”

“You’ll have to ask him about that.”

“He’s wily,” Martinsson said. “I wouldn’t put it past him to have copied some of that material over onto his own computer.”

Martinsson promised to call Modin, and they agreed they would be in touch again in the afternoon.

As Wallander was putting his phone back, he thought that Martinsson sounded completely normal. Either he’s much better at this game of deception than I could have imagined, he thought, or else what Höglund told me isn’t right.

Wallander got to the station at a quarter to nine. When he reached his office there was a message on his desk. “Something has come up,” he read in Hansson’s jerky handwriting. Wallander sighed over his colleague’s inability to communicate more effectively. “Something” was his trademark. The question was always what this “something” referred to. He left and walked to the lunchroom.

The coffee machine had been fixed. Nyberg sat at a table eating his breakfast. Wallander sat down across from him.

“If you ask me about my vertigo, I’m leaving,” Nyberg said.

“I guess I’ll pass, then.”

“I feel fine,” Nyberg said. “I just wish retirement would hurry up and get here. Even though the money will be bad.”

Wallander knew it wasn’t true. Clearly Nyberg was tired and worn out, but he probably feared his retirement more than anything else.

“Is there any word on Landahl from the coroner’s office?”

“He died about three hours before the ferry arrived in Ystad. I guess that means whoever killed him was still aboard, unless he jumped ship, of course.”

“That was a mistake on my part,” Wallander admitted. “We should have checked the passengers before allowing them to get off.”

“What we should have done was choose a different career,” said Nyberg.

He didn’t say anything else, and Wallander decided it was best to leave him alone. This was an easy choice, since he never had to direct him in any way. Nyberg was thorough and well-organized and could always judge which aspects of a case were most urgent and which could wait. Wallander got up to leave.

“I’ve been thinking,” Nyberg said suddenly.

Wallander looked attentively at him, since he knew that Nyberg sometimes had an uncanny ability to come up with crucial observations. In more than one instance, what he had said had helped to completely turn a case around.

“What have you been thinking?”

“About that relay that we found in the morgue. About the handbag that was thrown down by the fence. And the body put back by the cash machine, without two of its fingers. We’ve been trying to find a meaning in all of this, to get it to fit into a pattern. Isn’t that right?”

Wallander nodded.

“We’ve been trying. But it’s not going very well. At least not so far.”

Nyberg scraped up the rest of his muesli from his bowl before continuing.

“I talked to Höglund yesterday. She filled me in on what you talked about at the meeting. Apparently you stressed the double meanings in the events of this case. You said there was something both deliberate and accidental about the events. Is that right?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, what happens if we take this more seriously, that there is both deliberate planning and coincidence at work here?”

Wallander shook his head. He had nothing to say and waited for Nyberg to go on.

“So I had an idea. What if we’re over-interpreting what’s happened? First, we find out the murder of the taxi driver is much less significant than we thought. What if that’s true about other things as well? What if much of what has happened is for our benefit — to lead us astray, as it were?”

Wallander sensed that Nyberg was onto something important. “What are you thinking of, specifically?”

“First of all, this relay.”

“Are you trying to say that Falk had nothing to do with Sonja’s murder?”

“Not really. But I think someone wants us to think that Falk had much more to do with it than was actually the case.”

Wallander was starting to get very interested.

“Or this business about his body turning up again. What if we assume it doesn’t mean anything? Where does that get us?”

Wallander thought about it.

“It leaves us in a swamp. We don’t know where to put our feet to get to solid ground.”

“Good image,” Nyberg said approvingly. “I didn’t think anyone would ever be able to top Rydberg as far as fitting analogies went, but I wonder if you aren’t even sharper than he was. We’re wading through a swamp, exactly where someone wants us to be.”

“And we need to find our way back to solid ground?”

“Take the business with the fence, for example. We’ve been driving ourselves crazy trying to figure out why the outer gate was forced and the inner door was unlocked.”

Wallander understood what Nyberg was driving at. It irritated him that he hadn’t picked up on this himself.

“So the person who unlocked the door later banged up the gate simply in order to confuse us. Is that what you mean?”

“Seems like the easiest explanation to me.”

Wallander nodded in agreement.

“Good job,” he said. “I’m embarrassed I haven’t seen this myself until now.”

“You can hardly be expected to think of everything yourself.”

“Any other details we should ignore?”

“No. We just need to proceed carefully and evaluate the events as they come up. Decide if they’re important or not.”

Nyberg rose to his feet, signaling the end of the conversation. He walked over to the sink to wash his plate. The last thing Wallander heard before leaving the lunchroom was Nyberg complaining about the old bristles on the brush.

Wallander continued to Hansson’s office. His door was open, and Wallander saw that he was busy filling in his tip sheets. Wallander knocked in order to give Hansson a moment to put them away before he walked in.

“I saw your note,” he said.

“The Mercedes van has turned up,” he said.

Wallander leaned against the doorjamb while Hansson searched through his growing piles of paper.

“I did like you said and went through the programs again yesterday. A small-car rental company in Malmö finally reported a stolen vehicle. A dark-blue Mercedes van which should have been returned on Wednesday.”

“What was the name it was rented under?”

“You’ll like this,” Hansson replied. “It was a man named Fu Cheng.”

“Who paid with American Express.”

“Exactly.”

Wallander nodded grimly.

“He must have given them a local address.”

“Hotel Saint Jörgen. But the rental company already checked with them and they have no record of a guest with that name.”

Wallander frowned.

“That’s strange. You would think this Fu Cheng wouldn’t run the risk of being exposed like that.”

“There’s a possible explanation,” Hansson said. “There was a man of Asian appearance who was staying at the Hotel Saint Jörgen, only his name was Andersen and he came from Denmark. But the rental company checked his description with the hotel personnel and are convinced it was the same man.”

“How did he pay for his room?”

“Cash.”

Wallander thought for a moment.

“He would have had to give them his home address.”

Hansson searched for another piece of paper in his pile. A tip sheet fell to the ground without his noticing and Wallander kindly ignored it.

“Here we go. Andersen gave them a street address in Vedbæk.”

“Has anyone checked it out?”

“The rental company has been extremely persistent. I guess the van was valuable. It turns out the street he wrote down doesn’t exist.”

“And that’s where the tracks stop,” Wallander said.

“The car hasn’t been found, either. Do we keep looking for it?”

Wallander didn’t take long to make up his mind.

“Hold off on that for now. You have more important things to do. We’ll get back to it.”

Hansson gestured toward the heaps of paper.

“I don’t know how we’re supposed to be able to get all this other work done at the same time.”

Wallander didn’t have the energy to be pulled into yet another discussion of chronic police understaffing.

“We’ll talk later,” he said and left. He cast a quick eye on the latest papers to have landed on his own desk, then grabbed his coat and got ready to go down to Runnerstrom Square to check out Alfredsson. He was curious how the encounter between him and Robert Modin would go.

But after he got behind the wheel, he did not immediately start up the engine. His thoughts went to his dinner with Elvira the night before. It was a long time since he had felt so good. He still had trouble believing that it was true. But Elvira Lindfeldt was real. She was no mirage.

He couldn’t resist the impulse to call her up. He took out his cell phone and quickly dialed the number he had already memorized. She picked up after the third ring. Although she said she was happy to hear from him, Wallander got the distinct impression that he had interrupted her. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he knew there was something there. A wave of unexpected jealousy came over him, but he kept it out of his voice.

“I wanted to thank you again for coming out here last night.”

“Oh, there’s no need to do that. But it’s sweet of you.”

“Was the drive home all right?”

“I almost ran over a rabbit. But apart from that it was fine.”

“I’m here in my office and I was trying to imagine what you do on Saturday mornings. But I must be disturbing you.”

“Not at all. I was in the middle of cleaning my apartment.”

“This is probably not a good time, so I won’t keep you. But I wonder if you have any time to get together later this weekend?”

“Tomorrow would be best for me. Could you call back later this afternoon?”

Wallander promised to do so.

Afterward, he sat and stared at the phone. He knew he had disturbed her. He could hear it in her voice. I’m imagining things, he thought. I once made that mistake with Baiba. I even went to Riga Without telling her in advance just to see if my suspicions were correct. But there wasn’t another man in her life. I ruas zurong.

He decided to take her at her word. She was in the middle of cleaning up, nothing more. When he called back later in the afternoon she would be back to normal.

Wallander drove down to Runnerström Square. He stayed in the car after turning off the engine, lost in thought until suddenly someone knocked on the windowpane. He jumped. It was Martinsson, who was smiling and holding up a bag of Danishes in his hand. Wallander felt almost happy to see him. Normally he would have talked to him about the events of the day. But he didn’t say anything. He just got out of the car.

“Were you napping?”

“I was thinking,” Wallander said curtly. “Is Alfredsson here?”

Martinsson laughed.

“The funny thing is, he actually looks like his namesake. But that’s just the surface. I don’t think he’s much of a comedian at heart.”

“Is Modin here as well?”

“I’ve arranged to pick him up at one o’clock.”

They walked across the street and up the stairs, where they paused.

“Alfredsson is a thorough sort,” Martinsson said. “I’m sure he’s very good. He’s still working his way through what we’ve done so far. His wife keeps calling every so often and chastizing him for not being at home.”

“I’m just going to say hello,” Wallander said. “Then I’ll leave you two alone until Modin gets here.”

“What was it he claimed to have done, by the way?”

“I don’t know exactly, but I think he said he had broken the rest of the codes.”

They walked in. Martinsson was right. Alfredsson bore an unnatural resemblance to the comedian. Wallander couldn’t help smiling a little. It lifted his mood, if only for the moment.

“We’re grateful you could come down here on such short notice,” Wallander said.

“I wasn’t aware of having a choice,” Alfredsson replied sourly.

“I’ve bought some Danishes,” Martinsson said. “That may help some.”

Wallander decided to leave immediately. It was only once Modin was in place that it would be worth his while.

“Call me when Modin gets here,” he said to Martinsson. “I’ll be back then.”

Alfredsson made an exclamation. He was sitting in front of the computer.

“There’s a letter to Falk,” he said.

Wallander and Martinsson walked over to take a look. A small cursor indicated that there was mail. Alfredsson retrieved it.

“It’s for you,” he said in a surprised tone of voice and looked at Wallander.

Wallander put on his glasses and read the brief message.

It was from Robert Modin.

They have traced me. I need help. Robert.

“Damn,” Martinsson said. “I thought he said he always covered his tracks!”

Not another one, Wallander thought helplessly. I can’t cope with another one.

He was already on his way down the stairs with Martinsson at his heels.

Martinsson’s car was closer. Wallander put the police light on the roof.

Together they sped out of Ystad. It was ten o’clock in the morning. The rain was pouring down.

Chapter Thirty-Four

After the hair-raising drive to Loderup, Wallander finally met Robert’s mother. She was overweight and seemed very nervous. She had plugs of cotton wool in her nostrils and was lying on the sofa with a damp towel on her forehead.

Robert Modin’s father had opened the door when they had pulled into the driveway. Wallander searched in vain for his first name. He looked over at Martinsson.

“His name is Axel Modin.”

They got out of the car, and the first thing Axel Modin said was that Robert had taken the car. He repeated this sentence again and again.

“The boy took the car. He doesn’t even have a license.”

“Does he know how to drive?” Martinsson asked.

“Hardly I’ve tried to teach him. I have no idea how I got such an impractical son.”

But he knows his way around a computer, Wallander thought. However you explain that.

They ran across the yard to get out of the heavy rain. Once they were in the hall, Axel Modin said in a low voice that his wife was in the living room.

“She has a nosebleed,” he said. “She always gets one when she is upset.”

Wallander and Martinsson walked in to meet her. She started to cry when she heard that they were from the police.

“We’d better sit down in the kitchen,” Axel Modin said. “That way we won’t disturb her. She has a tendency to get anxious.”

Wallander sensed a note of sadness in his voice as he spoke of his wife. They walked out into the kitchen and Axel closed the door part of the way. During the entire conversation, Wallander had the feeling that he was listening for any sound from his wife.

He asked them if they wanted coffee and they both declined. They shared a feeling of urgency. During the ride out to Löderup Wallander had grown increasingly afraid. He wasn’t sure what was going on but he knew Robert could be in severe danger. They already had two dead youngsters in the case and Wallander couldn’t stand it happening a third time.

While they had been speeding down the highway toward Löderup, Wallander had been too nervous about Martinsson crashing the car to say anything, but once they reached the smaller roads where he was forced to slow down, he started asking some questions.

“How could he have known we were in Falk’s office? And how could he have used Falk’s account?”

“He probably tried to call you first,” Martinsson said. “Is your phone turned on?”

Wallander took it out. It was turned off. He swore.

“He must have guessed that we were likely to be there,” Martinsson continued. “And of course he had simply memorized the information about Falk’s e-mail. There’s nothing wrong with his mind.”

They didn’t get any further before it was time to turn into Modin’s yard. Now they were sitting in the kitchen.

“What happened?” Wallander asked. “We got what amounts to an SOS from Robert.”

Axel Modin stared at him in disbelief.

“An SOS?”

“He sent us an e-mail. But the most important thing now is that you tell us what happened on your end.”

“I don’t know anything,” Axel Modin said. “I didn’t even know you were on your way. But I have noticed that he’s been up late the past couple of nights. I don’t know what he’s been up to, but I know it has to do with those damned computers of his. This morning when I woke up around six he was still up. He must not have slept at all. I knocked on his door and asked if he wanted a cup of coffee. He said yes. He came down after about half an hour, but didn’t say anything. He seemed completely absorbed in his thoughts.”

“Was that typical of him?”

“Yes, it didn’t surprise me at all. I could see in his face that he hadn’t slept.”

“Did he tell you anything about what he was doing?”

“No, he never did. It wouldn’t have done any good. I’m an old man and I don’t understand the first thing about computers.”

“What happened after that?”

“He drank the coffee, had a glass of water, and went back upstairs.”

“I didn’t think he drank coffee,” Martinsson said. “I thought he was very particular about his dietary habits.”

“Coffee is the big exception. But you’re right. He’s vegan, he says.”

Wallander wasn’t sure what the criteria for a vegan were. Linda had tried to explain it all to him once and had mentioned things such as environmental consciousness, buckwheat, and sprouts. But it was beside the point in this discussion. He pressed on.

“So Robert returned to his bedroom. What time was it then?”

“A quarter to seven.”

“Did you receive any calls this morning?”

“He has a cell phone. I can’t hear it.”

“Then what happened?”

“At eight I went upstairs with breakfast for my wife. When I walked past his door I didn’t hear anything. I actually stopped and tried to hear if he might have gone to bed.”

“Do you think he had?”

“It was quiet and I think he was lying in bed. But I don’t think he was sleeping. I got the impression that he was thinking.”

Wallander wrinkled his nose.

“How could you know that?”

“I can’t, of course. But I don’t think it’s so hard to tell if a person behind that closed door is thinking with great concentration. Don’t you think you can sense it?”

Martinsson nodded in an understanding manner that irritated Wallander. The hell you’d be able to tell if I was thinking hard if the door was closed, he thought to himself.

“Let’s move on. You gave your wife breakfast in bed.”

“Not in bed, actually. She has a little table in the bedroom. She’s often unsettled in the morning and needs a little time to herself.”

“And then?”

“I went back down to the kitchen to wash the dishes and feed the cats. And the chickens out back. We have a couple of ducks as well. Then I went down to the mailbox and got the morning paper. Then I had some more coffee and read the paper.”

“And the whole time you didn’t hear any noise from upstairs?”

“No. It was after this that it happened.”

Martinsson and Wallander grew more attentive. Axel Modin got up and walked over to the living-room door. He pulled it a little closer, then came back to the table and sat down.

“I suddenly heard Robert’s door open with a bang. He came rushing down the stairs with incredible speed. I only had time to stand up before he reached the kitchen. He looked completely in shock, as if I were a ghost. Before I had time to say anything he ran out into the hall and locked the front door. Then he came back and asked me if I had seen anyone. He screamed it at me, that is.”

“That was what he said? ‘Have you seen anyone?’?”

“He was beside himself. I asked him what the matter was, of course. But he didn’t listen to me. He was looking out the window, here in the kitchen and in the living room. My wife started yelling from upstairs. She was frightened by the noise. It was pretty hectic in here for a few minutes, I can tell you.”

“What happened?”

“When he came back into the kitchen, he had my shotgun with him and ordered me to get the ammunition for it. That scared me, and I asked him again what had happened but he didn’t say anything. He just wanted that buckshot. But I didn’t give him any.”

“Then what happened?”

“He threw the shotgun on the sofa in there and grabbed the car keys. I tried to stop him, but he shoved me aside and ran out.”

“What time was it?”

“I don’t know. My wife was screaming at the top of the stairs and I had to take care of her. But it was probably a quarter to nine.”

Wallander looked at the time. It was now about an hour later. Robert Modin had sent out his e-mail asking for help and then he had left.

Wallander stood up.

“Did you see what he direction he was taking?”

“He went north.”

“One other thing. Did you see anyone when you went out to get the paper? Or when you fed the chickens?”

“Who would I have seen? And in this weather?”

“There may have been a car parked somewhere. Or someone who drove past.”

“There was no one here.”

Wallander nodded to Martinsson.

“We have to look at his room,” Wallander said.

Axel Modin had buried his face in his hands.

“Can someone explain to me what’s going on?”

“Not right now,” Wallander said. “But we’re going to try to find your son.”

“He was frightened,” Axel Modin said softly. “I had never seen him so frightened. He was as frightened as his mother sometimes gets.”

Martinsson and Wallander walked upstairs. Martinsson pointed to a shotgun that was leaning against the railing. The flickering screens of two monitors greeted them in Robert’s room. There were clothes all over the floor, and the wastepaper basket next to the desk was overflowing.

“What happened shortly before nine this morning?” Wallander asked. “Something scared him, he sent us the e-mail and then ran. He was desperate, literally afraid for his life. He wanted to use the shotgun for protection. He looked out the window and then took the car.”

Martinsson pointed to the cell phone that was lying right between the two computers.

“He may have received a call,” he said. “Or else he could have made a call and heard something that frightened him. It’s too bad he didn’t take the phone with him when he left.”

Wallander pointed to the computers.

“If he sent us a message, he may also very well have received one. He told us that someone had traced him and that he needed our help.”

“But he didn’t wait for us.”

“Either something else happened after he wrote to us, or else he didn’t want to wait any longer.”

Martinsson sat down at the desk.

“We’ll leave this one for now,” he said pointing to the smaller of the two computers.

Wallander didn’t ask how Martinsson could determine which of the two was more important. Right now he was dependent on his knowledge. It was an unusual situation for Wallander. For once one of his colleagues knew more than he did.

While Martinsson started typing on the keyboard, Wallander looked around the room. The rain was whipping against the window. On one wall there was a large poster with a carrot on it. It was the only thing that stood out in a room devoted to the electronic sphere. There were computer books, diskettes, and cables. Some of the computer cords were wrapped around each other like a nest of vipers. There were a modem, a printer, a TV, and two VCRs. Wallander walked over to Martinsson and bent his knees. What could Robert have seen through his window as he was sitting at the desk? There was a road far away in the distance. He could have seen a car, Wallander thought. He looked around the room again, lifting things carefully, until he found a pair of binoculars under a pile of papers. He directed them at the window and looked. A raven flew past and Wallander flinched involuntarily. Otherwise there was nothing. A fence that was falling down, some trees, and a small road that snaked through the fields.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

Martinsson mumbled something incoherent. Wallander put on his glasses and looked at the pieces of paper that lay closest to the computers. Robert Modin’s handwriting was hard to read. There were some half-finished equations and phrases, without beginning or end. The word “delay” occurred several times. Sometimes it was underlined, other times it appeared with a question mark beside it. Wallander kept looking. On another page Robert had written “completion date of programming?” and then two additonal words: “insider necessary?” A lot of question marks, Wallander thought. He’s been searching for answers, just as we have.

“Here,” Martinsson said suddenly. “He got some e-mail. Then he sent his message to us.”

Wallander leaned in and read the message.

Nothing else. Only those four words.

“Is there anything else?” Wallander asked.

“There have been no messages since then.”

“Who sent the letter?”

Martinsson pointed at the screen.

“The person’s identity is hidden behind all these scrambled codes. This is someone who didn’t want to say who he was.”

“But where did it come from?”

“The name of the server is ‘Vesuvius,”’ Martinsson said. “We can certainly have it traced, but it may take a while.”

“You don’t think it’s here in Sweden?”

“I doubt it.”

“Vesuvius is a volcano in Italy,” Wallander mused. “Can that be where it came from? What happens if we return the message?”

“I’m not sure. We can try.”

Martinsson prepared a return message.

“What do you want the text to say?”

Wallander thought about it.

“ ‘Please repeat your message,”’ he said. “Try that.”

Martinsson nodded approvingly and wrote the message in English.

“Should I sign it ‘Robert Modin’?”

“Yes.”

Martinsson hit SEND, and the text vanished into cyberspace. Then a message came up on the screen saying that the address was unknown.

“You’ll have to tell me what you want me to do next,” Martinsson said. “What should I look for, do you think? Where ‘Vesuvius’ is, or something else?”

“Send a message to someone over the Internet asking about this server,” Wallander said. “Ask if anyone knows where to find it.”

But then he changed his mind.

“Put the question this way. Is the server ‘Vesuvius’ located in Angola?”

Martinsson was taken aback.

“Are you still thinking about that postcard from Luanda?”

“No, I think the postcard is incidental. But I think Falk met someone in Luanda a number of years ago and that it was a turning point in his life. I don’t know what happened there, but I’m sure it’s important. Crucial, in fact.”

Martinsson looked hard at him.

“Sometimes I think you put too much stock in your intuition, if you’ll pardon me for saying so.”

Wallander had to control himself in order not to fly off the handle. His rage at Martinsson boiled up inside him. But he took a deep breath. They had to focus on Robert Modin. But Wallander did file away what Martinsson had said, word for word. He could have a long memory, as Martinsson was going to learn firsthand.

But for now, he had an idea he wanted to try out.

“While Robert was working for us, he often consulted with a couple of friends on line,” Wallander said. “One in California and one in Rättvik. Did you ever make a note of their e-mail addresses?”

“I wrote everything down,” Martinsson said in a hurt voice. Wallander assumed he was upset because he hadn’t thought of it himself.

Wallander cheered up.

“They won’t hold anything against us for asking about Vesuvius,” Wallander continued. “Make it clear that we’re asking on Robert’s behalf. While you do that, I’m going to start looking for him.”

“What does this message mean, anyway?” Martinsson said. “He didn’t manage to clean up after himself. Is that it?”

“You’re the one who knows about these things,” Wallander said. “Not me. But I have a feeling that has only been growing stronger. You’ll have to correct me if I’m wrong, and this feeling has nothing to do with my intuition, only with facts. But I feel as if the people we’re dealing with are supremely well informed of our activities.”

“We know someone has been observing our activities at Apelbergsgatan and Runnerström Square. You almost ran into him, in fact, when he took a shot at you.”

“That’s not it. I’m not talking about this person, who may or may not be called Fu Cheng. What I’m getting at is that it almost seems as if we have a leak inside the station.”

Martinsson burst out laughing. Wallander couldn’t tell if it was derisive or not.

“You’re not serious! You don’t think one of us is mixed up in this, do you?”

“No, I don’t. But I’m wondering if there might be another kind of leak.”

Wallander pointed at the computer.

“What I’m wondering is if someone has been doing the same thing we were doing with Falk’s computer. Breaking in to get secret information.”

“The national registers are extremely secure.”

“But what about our personal computers? Are they so watertight that someone with the right amount of expertise and drive couldn’t break into them? You and Höglund write all your reports on them. I don’t know about Hansson. I do it some of the time. Nyberg tussles with his machine. The coroner’s report comes both in a hard copy and electronically. What would happen if someone had a way in and was watching everything that came in to our computers? Without us being aware of it?”

“It isn’t plausible,” Martinsson said. “Our security is very good.”

“It’s just a thought,” Wallander said. “One of many.” He felt around in his pocket for his cell phone, then remembered he had left it in Martinsson’s car.

He left Martinsson and walked down the stairs. Through the half open door to the living room he could see Axel Modin put an arm around his giant wife, who still had cotton balls in her nostrils. It was an image that filled him with pity and, mysteriously, with joy. Which feeling dominated he wasn’t sure. He knocked carefully on the door.

Axel Modin came out into the kitchen.

“I need to use your phone,” Wallander said.

“Do you know what happened? Why is Robert so afraid?”

“We’re still trying to determine that. But don’t worry.” Wallander said a silent prayer that his words would turn out to be true. He sat down by the phone in the hall. Before lifting the receiver, he reflected on what needed to be done. The first thing he had to address was whether or not there was real cause for worry. But the e-mail message addressed to Robert was real. There was someone out there who had sent it. And the case so far was characterized by secrecy and silence, and by people who did not hesitate to kill.

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

“I need to use your car,” Wallander said.

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

Wallander decided to take a look at the little road that ran through the fields and that Robert could see through his window. There was probably nothing there, but Wallander wanted to be sure. He drove out onto the road and started looking for the turnoff. He drove much too fast down the muddy road between the fields, but since it was Martinsson’s car it was a way to take another small revenge. He stopped when he got to the point he had found through the binoculars. He got out of the car and looked around. The rain was almost completely gone now. If Martinsson looked up, he would be able to see his car and its driver. Wallander looked down at the road and saw that another car had been there. He thought he could tell that it had stopped nearby, but the tracks were not easy to see. The rain had almost washed them away. But someone probably stopped here, he thought.

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

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

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

Wallander looked around one more time, then drove back to the house, remembering to bring his cell phone with him this time. Axel Modin met him at the door and raised his eyebrows.

“I haven’t found Robert,” Wallander said. “But we are looking for him, and there’s no need to be concerned.”

Axel Modin did not believe him. Wallander could see it in his face, but Modin didn’t say anything. He looked away, as if he found Wallander’s concern insulting. There was no sound from the living room.

“Do you have any idea where he may have gone?” Wallander asked.

Axel Modin shook his head.

“I don’t know.”

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

“I’ve called all his friends. No one has seen him. They promised to let me know if they did.”

“You have to think hard,” Wallander said. “He’s your son. He’s scared and he fled in your car. What could he be thinking of as a safe hiding place?”

“He likes to walk on the beach,” Modin said doubtfully. “Down by Sandhammaren or on the fields around Backåkra. I don’t know of any other place.”

Wallander was also doubtful. A beach was too open, just like a field. Of course, there was the fog. A better hiding place than the Scanian fog was hard to imagine.

“Keep thinking,” Wallander said. “You may be able to think of something else, some hiding place from his childhood.”

He went to the phone and called Höglund. The patrol cars had already been dispatched. The police in Simrishamn had been alerted and were helping them. Wallander told her about Sandhammaren and Backakra.

“I’m going up to Backåkra,” he said. “Get another car to Sandhammaren.”

Höglund told him she’d handle it and said she was going out to Löderup.

Wallander hung up as Martinsson came dashing down the stairs.

“Rättvik got back to me,” he said. “You were right. The server ‘Vesuvius’ is registered in Luanda.”

Wallander nodded. He was not surprised.

But it increased his fear.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Wallander stood there in the hallway staring at Martinsson as the seconds ticked by. The only thing he was sure of was that they had to find Robert before it was too late. Images of Sonja Hökberg’s scorched body and Jonas Landahl’s butchered remains swept through his mind. Wallander wanted to dash out into the fog and start to look. But the situation was still unclear. Robert was out there somewhere, terrified. He had fled just as Jonas Landahl had fled. But someone had caught up with Landahl.

And now Robert Modin was in the same situation.

Martinsson had established that some Brazilian entrepreneurs were responsible for the installation and upkeep of the server called Vesuvius. But they had not yet identified the person who had written to Robert, even if Wallander suspected it to be “C.” Who this person was, or if there was even a group of individuals hiding behind the letter, remained unknown.

Martinsson returned to the computers upstairs. Wallander had encouraged him to keep talking to Robert’s hacker friends in Rättvik and California. They might even know about a possible hiding place.

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

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

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

“We don’t know where he is,” Wallander said. “But he fled in a state of panic. We can’t know for sure the extent of the threat against him, and we don’t know if his movements were actually being monitored by someone, but for now that is what we’re going to assume to be the case.”

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

“That must not have been enough,” Wallander said. “Especially if he copied material and kept working on it through the night after he got home. After he had said good-bye to us.”

“I haven’t found anything to indicate that,” Martinsson said. “But you may be right.”

Once Martinsson had seen to the regional alert, they decided to establish their temporary headquarters at the house. It was possible that Robert would contact someone here. Höglund would go down to Sandhammaren with a few cars while Wallander went to Backåkra.

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

“I’d like the shotgun,” Wallander said. “And some rounds of buckshot.”

Wallander could see the anxiety flare up in Modin’s face.

“It’s a precautionary measure,” Wallander said in an attempt to allay his fears.

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

Wallander was back in Martinsson’s car, headed to Backåkra. Cars were crawling along the highway. Headlights emerged from the fog and were swallowed up again. The whole time, he was racking his brains to figure out where Robert Modin must have gone. Had he left without a thought in his head, or did he have a plan? Wallander realized he wasn’t going to get anywhere. He didn’t know Robert well enough.

He almost missed the turnoff for Backåkra. He turned sharply and sped up, even though he was now on a smaller road. But he didn’t expect to meet any other cars here. The grounds as well as the house were owned by the Swedish Academy, the elite group of writers and intellectuals responsible for awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature, and it was probably deserted this time of year. He got out of the car when he reached the parking lot and took the shotgun with him. He heard a foghorn in the distance, and he could smell the sea. Visibility was only about one meter. He walked around the parking lot but didn’t see any other cars. He walked up to the house and its outer buildings, but it was thoroughly locked. What am I doing here? he wondered. If there’s no car, then there’s no Robert either. But something drove him onward toward the fields. He went to the right, where he knew he would find the small meditation garden. A bird squawked nearby. The fog made it impossible to judge distances accurately. He reached the ring of stones that bordered the meditation garden. Now he could hear the sea clearly. No one was there, and no one seemed to have been there, either. He got out his phone and called Höglund. She was in Sandhammaren. There were still no traces of Modin’s car.

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

“I don’t think he’s gone that far,” Wallander said. “I think he’s still in the area. In fact, I’m sure of it.”

He ended the conversation and started back. Suddenly something caught his attention. He listened. A car was approaching the parking lot. He concentrated intensely. Robert Modin had fled in a Volkswagen Golf sedan. But the engine sound from this car sounded different. Instinctively he loaded the shotgun. Then he pressed on. The engine noise stopped. Wallander waited. A car door was opened, but not closed. Wallander was sure it was not Modin who had just arrived. Perhaps it was a caretaker coming to see to the place. Or to find out who it was who had just arrived, to make sure it wasn’t a burglar. Wallander thought about getting closer but something warned him not to. What it was he couldn’t say. He left the little path he was on and made a wide circle back, heading toward the other end of the parking lot. From time to time he stopped. I would have heard someone unlock the door and enter the house, he thought.

But it’s too quiet out there. Much too quiet.

He looked at the house again. He was directly behind it. He took a few steps back and the house disappeared from view into the gray fog. Then he walked around toward the parking lot. He arrived at the fence, and climbed over with some difficulty. Then he slowly examined the parking lot. Visibility was even worse now. He thought that it was probably a bad idea to get too close to Martinsson’s car. It was better to go around it. He stayed close to the fence so he wouldn’t lose his sense of direction.

He stopped short when he reached the entrance to the parking lot. There was the car. Or rather, the van. At first he wasn’t sure what it was, but then it dawned on him that he was looking at a dark-blue Mercedes van.

He took a few quick steps back into the fog and listened. His heart was beating faster. He undid the safety catch on the shotgun. The door to the driver’s side had been open. He was standing completely still now. There was no doubt in his mind that this was the van they had been looking for. It was the same one that had brought Falk’s body back to the cash machine. And now it was out in the fog looking for Modin.

But Modin isn’t here, Wallander thought.

Then it suddenly occurred to him that they could just as well be looking for him. If they had seen Modin leave the house, they could also have been observing him. He tried to think back to his drive here. No car had overtaken him, but hadn’t there been a pair of headlights in his rearview mirror?

His cell phone rang in his pocket. Wallander jumped and answered as quickly as he could with a low voice. But it wasn’t Martinsson or Höglund. It was Elvira Lindfeldt.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” she said. “But I wonder if we could set a date for tomorrow. That is, if you still want to.”

“I’m a bit busy right now,” Wallander said.

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

“Can I call you back?” he asked. “I’m busy right now.”

“Can you repeat that?” she asked. “I really can’t hear you very well.”

He raised his voice slightly.

“I can’t talk now. I’ll call you back.”

“I’m at home,” she replied.

Wallander turned off his phone. This is insane, he thought. She doesn’t understand. She thinks I’m avoiding her. Why did she have to pick this time to call, for heaven’s sake?

Then he had a thought that made his head spin. He didn’t know where it came from and he brushed it aside before it had a chance to catch. But it had been there, like a dark undercurrent in his mind. Why did she call just now? Was it a coincidence?

It was an unreasonable thought and it was a symptom of his fatigue and his growing sense of being the object of his colleagues’ conspiracies to get rid of him. He stared at the phone before putting it away. He would call her as soon as this was over. He was about to put the phone in his pocket when it slipped. He bent down to try to catch it before it fell on the wet ground.

It saved his life. At the same moment that he bent down he heard a loud noise like a gunshot above and behind him. He left the phone where it was and raised his shotgun. Something was moving in the fog. Wallander threw himself to the side and then stumbled away as fast as he could. His heart was beating wildly. He didn’t know who had fired the gun and he didn’t know why. He must have heard my voice, Wallander thought. He heard me and was creeping up toward me. If I hadn’t dropped the phone I wouldn’t be here now. The thought terrified him. The shotgun shook in his arms. He didn’t know where his phone was, nor the car. He lost all sense of direction as he ran. He just wanted to get away. He crouched down with the shotgun in his arms and waited. The man was out there somewhere. Wallander tried to see through the thick white mass and strained his ears. But there was no sound. Wallander realized he shouldn’t stay. He made a quick decision and fired into the air. The bang was deafening and he ran a few meters to one side, then listened again. He was close to the fence now and knew which way to go to get away from the parking lot.

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

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

“What’s happening here?” Hansson shouted. “We got a report of a gunshot in the area. And Höglund said you had gone down here.”

Wallander tried to explain what had happened as quickly as he could.

“No one goes down there without the proper protection,” he finished. “We also need dogs. But first we have to be prepared for the possibility that he tries to shoot his way out.”

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

“The fog is about to lift,” Martinsson said. “I’ve talked to the National Weather Service. It’s very localized.”

They waited. It was now one o’clock on Saturday, the eighteenth of October. Wallander had borrowed Hansson’s phone and gone off to one side. He dialed Elvira’s number but changed his mind and hung up before she answered.

The fog didn’t lift until half past one. But then it disappeared quickly. It was gone in a matter of minutes and the sun came out. They saw the parked van and Martinsson’s car. No one was around. Wallander walked over and found his phone.

“He must have taken off on foot,” he said. “He abandoned the van.” Hansson called Nyberg, who promised to come as quickly as possible. They searched the car but found nothing that told them anything about its driver.

“Did you catch sight of him at all?”

Höglund was the one who asked the question. It irritated Wallander and made him defensive.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t see him. You wouldn’t have been able to, either.”

She was taken aback.

“It was just a question,” she said sourly.

We’re all tired, Wallander thought. She and I both. Not to mention Nyberg. Martinsson might be the exception, since he had the energy to sneak around the police station and talk behind people’s backs.

Two canine units had been dispatched and were now searching the area. They immediately picked up a scent that led down toward the water. Nyberg arrived with his forensic technicians.

“I want fingerprints,” Wallander said. “That’s the main thing. I want to know if anything matches what we found at Apelbergsgatan or Runnerström Square. Or the power substation and Sonja Hökberg’s purse. And don’t forget Siv Eriksson’s apartment.”

Nyberg took a quick look into the van.

“I’m so grateful every time I’m called out to look at something that doesn’t involve mutilated bodies,” he said. “Or so much blood that I have to put on waders.”

Robert Modin was still missing without a trace. The canine units came back at three. They had lost the track some distance up the coast.

“Everyone looking for Robert Modin should also be keeping an eye out for a man with an Asian appearance,” Wallander said. “But it’s important that he not be directly approached. This man is armed and dangerous. He’s been unlucky twice, but don’t count on a third time. We should also remain alert to incoming reports of stolen cars.”

Wallander gathered the members of his closest team. The sun was shining and there was no wind. He led them to the meditation garden.

“Were there any police during the bronze age?” Hansson asked.

“Probably,” Wallander said. “But I doubt there was a justice department breathing down their necks.”

“They played horns,” Martinsson said. “I was at a concert recently at the Ale stone formation. They had tried to re-create prehistoric music. It sounded like foghorns.”

“Let’s try to focus on the situation at hand,” Wallander said. “Further discussion of the bronze age will have to wait. Robert Modin receives a threat on his computer and he flees. He has now been gone for about five or six hours. Somewhere out here is a person who is looking for him, but we can also assume this person is after me. This will naturally come to extend to all of you.”

He looked around at them.

“We need to ask ourselves why,” he continued, “and I can only find one reasonable explanation. He, or someone, is worried that we know something. And even worse, this person — or persons — is worried that we’re in a position to prevent something from occurring. I’m completely convinced that everything that has happened has been a result of Falk’s death, and has to do with whatever is in his computer.”

He paused and looked at Martinsson.

“How’s Alfredsson doing?”

“I last spoke to him over two hours ago. At that point he could only tell us what Modin told us — that there is some kind of ticking time bomb built into the program. Something is going to happen. He was going to apply various probability calculations and reduction programs to see if he could isolate some kind of pattern. He is also in contact with Interpol cybercrime experts to see if any other countries have experience with this kind of thing. I have the impression that he’s thorough and knows what he’s doing.”

“Then we’ll leave it in his hands,” Wallander said.

“But what if something is really going to happen on the twentieth? That’s on Monday. It’s less than thirty-four hours away,” Höglund said.

“Quite honestly, I don’t know what to tell you,” Wallander said. “But we know it must be something important, since these people are prepared to commit murder.”

“Could it be anything other than an act of terrorism?” Hansson asked. “Shouldn’t we have contacted the National Guards a long time ago?”

Hansson’s suggestion was met with hearty laughter. Neither Wallander nor any of his colleagues had the slightest confidence in the Swedish National Guards. But Hansson had a point, and Wallander should already have thought of it, since he was leading the investigation. His head was the one on the block, and it would roll if a situation developed in which the National Guards could have played a role in preventing what happened.

“Call them,” Wallander told Hansson. “If they actually stay open for business during the weekend.”

“What about the blackout?” Martinsson said. “It seems that whoever is behind this has developed a sophisticated knowledge of power stations. Could there be a plot to knock out the power grid?”

“We can’t rule anything out,” Wallander answered. “But that makes me think of the blueprint we found in Falk’s office. Do we know how it got there?”

“According to Sydkraft, the original was in Falk’s office and a copy had been left in its place in their files,” Höglund said. “They gave me a list of people who would have had access to these files. I gave it to Martinsson.”

Martinsson made an embarrassed gesture.

“I haven’t had time,” he said. “I’ll feed it through our registers as soon as I get a chance.”

“That is now a priority,” Wallander said. “It may give us something.”

A soft wind had started blowing cold air over the fields. They talked a moment longer about the most important tasks at hand, and then Wallander delegated them. Martinsson was the first to leave. He was going to bring Modin’s computers to the station, as well as cross-check the names that Sydkraft had sent them. Wallander put Hansson in charge of the search for Modin. Wallander felt a need to talk through the situation with someone, in this case Höglund. Ordinarily he would have chosen Martinsson, but now that was unthinkable.

Wallander and Höglund started walking back toward the parking lot together.

“Have you talked with him?” she asked.

“Not yet. It’s more important to focus on finding Modin and the reasons for all of this.”

“You’ve just been shot at for the second time this week. I can’t understand how you can take it so well.”

Wallander stopped and looked at her.

“Who says I’m taking it well?”

“You give that impression.”

“Well, it’s not true.”

They kept walking.

“Tell me how you see the case now,” he asked her. “Take your time. How would you explain it to someone? What can we expect in the near future?”

She swept her coat tightly around her.

“I can’t tell you any more than you already know.”

“But you’ll tell me in your own way. And if I hear your voice, at least I won’t be hearing my own thoughts for a while.”

“Sonja Hökberg was definitely raped,” she began. “I see no other reason for her crime. I think if we were to keep digging into her life we would find a young woman consumed by hatred. Sonja Hökberg is not the stone that is thrown into the water, she’s one of the outer rings. I think perhaps timing is the most important factor in her case.”

“Tell me what you mean.”

“What would have happened if Falk hadn’t died so close to the time she was arrested? Let’s say a few weeks had gone by, and say it wasn’t so close to the twentieth of October.”

Wallander nodded. So far her thinking was right on track.

“The fact that it’s close to some important event in time leads to hasty and unplanned actions on the part of our perpetrator? Is that what you mean?”

“There are no margins. Sonja Hökberg is being held by the police. Someone is afraid of what she can tell us. Specifically, something she may have heard from her friends, first and foremost Jonas Landahl, who is later also killed. All of these events are an attempt to keep something inside a computer a secret. The nocturnals, as Modin apparently calls them, want to keep doing their work in the dark. If one disregards some loose details, I think this about sums it up. It then also makes sense that Modin was threatened. And that you were attacked.”

“Why me? Why not any other police officer?”

“You were in the apartment when they came the first time. You have consistently been on the frontlines of this investigation.”

They kept walking in silence. The wind was gusty now. Höglund hunched her shoulders against it.

“There’s one more thing,” she said, “that we know, but that they don’t know.”

“What’s that?”

“That Sonja Hökberg never told us anything. In that sense, she actually died for nothing.”

Wallander nodded. She was right.

“I keep wondering what could be in that computer,” he said after a while. “The only thing that Martinsson and I have come up with is that it has something to do with money.”

“Perhaps there’s a big heist in the works? Isn’t that the way it’s done nowadays? A bank computer goes haywire and starts transferring money into the wrong account.”

“Maybe. We just don’t know.”

They had reached the parking lot. Höglund opened her mouth to say something when they both saw Hansson running toward them.

“We’ve found him!” Hansson shouted.

“Modin or the man who shot at me?”

“Modin. He’s in Ystad. One of the patrol cars spotted him when they drove back to change shifts.”

“Where was he?”

“He had parked at the corner of Surbrunnsvagen and Aulingatan. By the People’s Park.”

“Where is he now?”

“At the station.”

Wallander saw the relief in Hansson’s face.

“He’s okay,” Hansson said. “We got to him first.”

“Yes, it seems like it.”

It was a quarter to four.

Chapter Thirty-Six

The phone call that Carter had been waiting for came at five o’clock. It was a bad connection, and it was difficult to interpret Cheng’s broken English. Carter thought that it was like being transported back to the 1980s, when communications between Africa and the rest of the world was still very poor. He remembered a time when it was still a challenge to do something as simple as send or receive a fax.

But in spite of the time difference and the static, Carter had still managed to understand Cheng’s message. When the phone call ended, Carter had walked out into the garden to think. He had trouble controlling his irritation. Cheng had not lived up to his expectations, and nothing was more infuriating to him than when people were not able to handle the tasks that he asked them to carry out. The latest news report was unsettling, and he knew he had to make an important decision.

The heat, after he’d left the cool and air-conditioned house, was oppressive. Lizards ran to and fro around his feet. The sweat was already trickling down inside his shirt, but it was not from the heat. It was from the anxiety he felt. Carter had to think clearly and calmly. Cheng had failed him, but his female watchdog was doing a better job. Nonetheless, she had her limits. He knew he had no real choice now. But it was not too late. There was a plane leaving for Lisbon at eleven o’clock in the evening. That was in six hours. I can’t take any more chances, he thought. Therefore, I have to go.

The decision was made. He went back inside and sent the necessary e-mails.

Then he called the airport to book his flight.

He ate the dinner that Celine had prepared. Then he showered and packed his bag. He shivered at the thought of having to travel to the cold.

At ten minutes past eleven, the TAP Portuguese Airlines plane headed for Lisbon took off from Luanda airport. It was only ten minutes late.

They arrived at the station shortly after four o’clock. For some reason Modin had been set up in Svedberg’s old office that was now mainly used by police officers on temporary assignments. Modin was drinking a cup of coffee when Wallander came in. He smiled uncertainly when he saw Wallander, but Wallander could still see the fear underneath.

“Let’s go into my office,” he said.

Modin took his cup of coffee and followed him. When he sat down in the chair across from Wallander’s desk, the armrest fell off. He jumped.

“That happens all the time,” Wallander said. “Leave it.”

He sat down in his chair and cleared all his paperwork from the middle of his desk.

“I’m going to present you with a hypothesis I’m working on. I think that when we weren’t looking, you copied a bunch of material from Falk’s computer and transferred it to your own. What do you think of that?”

“I want to speak to a lawyer,” Modin said firmly.

“We don’t need lawyers,” Wallander said. “You haven’t actually broken any laws. At least not as far as I know. But I need to know exactly what you did.”

Modin didn’t believe him.

“You’re here now so that we can protect you,” Wallander continued.

“Not for any other reason. You are not being held here on charges. We don’t suspect you of anything.”

Modin still seemed to weighing Wallander’s words. He waited.

“Can I have that in writing?” he asked finally.

Wallander reached out for a pad of paper and wrote a guarantee for him. He signed it and wrote the date.

“I don’t have a stamp,” he said. “But this ought to work.”

“It’s not good enough,” Modin said.

“It will have to do,” Wallander said. “This is between you and me. I would accept it if I were you. If you don’t, there’s always the chance I’m going to change my mind.”

Modin realized he meant business.

“Tell me what happened,” Wallander said. “You received a threatening e-mail in your computer. I’ve read it myself. Then you looked up and saw that there was a car parked on that little road that goes between the fields behind your house. Is that right?”

Modin looked disbelievingly at him.

“How can you know all that?”

“I just know,” Wallander said. “You were scared and you left. The question I have is why you were so scared.”

“They had traced me.”

“So you weren’t careful enough at erasing your steps? Did you make the same mistake as last time?”

“They’re very good.”

“But so are you.”

Modin shrugged.

“The problem is that you started taking chances, isn’t that so? You copied material from Falk’s computer onto your own, and something happened. The temptation was too great. You kept working on the material through the night, and somehow they caught on to you while you weren’t looking.”

“I don’t know why you keep asking if you already know everything.”

Wallander decided to make his point.

“You have to understand that this is serious.”

“Of course I do. Why would I have tried to get away otherwise? I don’t even have my driver’s license.”

“Then we see eye to eye on this. You realize you’re involved in a dangerous business. From now on you need to do as I say. By the way, has anyone brought you any food?” he asked. “I know you have unusual food preferences.”

“A tofu pie would be nice,” Modin answered. “And some carrot juice.”

Wallander called Irene.

“Could you get us a tofu pie and a carrot juice, please.”

“Can you repeat that?”

Ebba would not have asked any questions, Wallander thought.

“Tofu pie.”

“What on God’s earth is that?”

“Food. It’s vegetarian. Please try to get it as quickly as you can.”

He hung up before Irene had a chance to ask anything else.

“Let’s start by talking about what you saw from your window,” Wallander said. “At some point you discovered a car out there.”

“There are never any cars on that road.”

“You took out your binoculars and took a closer look.”

“You already know everything I did.”

“No,” Wallander said. “I know part of it. What did you see?”

“A dark-blue car.”

“Was it a Mercedes?”

“I don’t know anything about cars.”

“Was it big? Did it look like a van?”

“Yes.”

“And there was someone standing next to the car?”

“That was what scared me. When I looked through the binoculars I saw a man who was looking at me with some binoculars of his own.”

“Could you see his face?”

“I was scared.”

“I know. What about his face?”

“He had dark hair.”

“What was he wearing?”

“A dark raincoat. I think.”

“Did you see anything else? Had you ever seen him before?”

“No. And I didn’t notice anything else.”

“You left. Could you tell if he followed you?”

“I don’t think he did. There’s a little road you can take just a little bit past our house. I don’t think he saw it.”

“Then what did you do?”

“I had sent you the e-mail, but I didn’t feel I could go to Runnerström Square. I didn’t know what to do. At first I was planning to go to Copenhagen. But I didn’t feel up to driving down to Malmö. I’m not a very good driver. Something could have happened.”

“So you simply drove into Ystad. What did you do then?”

“Nothing.”

“You stayed in the car until some policemen found you?”

“Yes.”

Wallander tried to think about where they should go from here. He wanted Martinsson to be present, as well as Alfredsson. He got up and left the room. Irene was at her desk. She shook her head when she saw him.

“How is the food coming?” he asked sternly.

“Sometimes I think all of you are nuts.”

“That’s probably true, but I have a boy back there who doesn’t eat hamburgers. I guess there are people like that. And he needs food.”

“I called Ebba,” Irene said. “She said she would take care of it.”

That put him in a better mood. If she had talked to Ebba, everything would be taken care of.

“I’d like to speak to Martinsson and Alfredsson as soon as possible,” he said. “Please get hold of them as soon as you can.”

At that moment Lisa Holgersson hurried in through the front doors.

“More shooting?” she asked. “That’s what I heard. What happened?”

Talking to Holgersson right now was the last thing he wanted, but Wallander knew he had no choice. He briefly filled her in on the latest events.

“Have you sent out an alert to the neighboring districts?”

“It’s been taken care of.”

“When can we have a meeting about this?”

“As soon as everyone comes back in.”

“It feels to me like this investigation is getting out of hand.”

“We’re not quite at that point,” Wallander said, and he didn’t bother to hide his irritation. “But feel free to relieve me of my responsibilities if you like. Hansson is the one who’s been in charge of the search operation.”

She had a few more questions, but Wallander had already turned his back and started walking away.

Martinsson and Alfredsson came in at five o’clock. Wallander and Modin met with them in one of the smaller conference rooms. Hansson had called to say there was still no trace of the man in the fog. No one knew exactly where Höglund was. Wallander barricaded the door to make sure no one could interrupt them. Modin’s computers were up and running.

“We’re going to go through everything from the beginning,” Wallander said when everyone had sat down.

“I’m not sure we can do that yet,” Alfredsson said. “There are too many things we can’t see clearly yet.”

Wallander turned to Modin.

“You said you had thought of something new,” he said.

“It’s hard to explain,” Modin said. “And I’m very hungry.”

Wallander felt irritated with him for the first time. Modin might be a computer whiz, but he was far from satisfactory in other respects.

“The food is on its way,” Wallander said. “If you need something right now we have good old Swedish rusks, and some leftover pizza. Take your pick.”

Modin got up and sat down in front of his computers. The others gathered behind him.

“It took me a while to figure all this out,” he began. “At first I was convinced that the number twenty that kept turning up had something to do with the year 2000. We already know that Y2K will cause a number of problems in many computer systems. But I never found the missing zeroes, and I also noticed that the countdown, whatever it’s for, looked like it was set to go off much sooner than the end of the year. So I concluded that it had to do with the twentieth of October instead.”

Alfredsson shook his head and looked like he wanted to protest, but Wallander held him back.

“Go on.”

“I started looking for the other pieces of the puzzle. We know something here proceeds from the left to the right. There is an end point, and that’s how we deduce that something is going to happen. But we don’t know what. I decided to surf the Web for information about the financial institutions we had already identified. The National Bank of Indonesia, the World Bank, the stockbroker in Seoul. I tried to see if they had anything in common — the point you’re always searching for.”

“What point would that be?”

“The point of weakness. The one spot where someone could enter the system without anyone noticing.”

“But there’s a lot of awareness about hackers these days,” Martinsson said. “And the business world is getting faster at responding to computer viruses when they emerge.”

“The United States already has the capacity to conduct computer wars,” Alfredsson said. “Earlier, the talk was about computer-programmed missiles, or ‘smart’ bombs. But soon that will be as antiquated as a cavalry. Now the goal is to dismantle the enemy’s networks and kill their missiles. Or better yet, to direct the enemy’s missiles against themselves.”

“Is this really true?” Wallander asked skeptically.

“It is definitely in the works,” Alfredsson said. “But we should also be honest about the fact that there are many things we just don’t know. Weapons systems are complicated.”

“Let’s return to Falk’s computer,” Wallander said. “Did you find those weak points?”

“I’m not sure,” Modin said hesitantly. “But I think there’s a way to see a connection between all of these institutions. They all have one thing in common.”

“And what is that?”

“They’re the cornerstones of the global financial network. If you compromised them enough, you’d be able to set in motion an economic crisis that could wipe out all of the world’s financial systems. The stockmarkets would crash. There’d be widespread panic. Everyone would rush to take out their money. Currency exchanges would go wild until no one could be sure what the rates should be.”

“And who would be interested in causing anything of this nature?”

Martinsson and Alfredsson spoke at the same time.

“Many people,” Alfredsson said. “It sounds like the highest form of terrorism imaginable. And there are many people out there eager to cause chaos and destruction.”

“Taking out the global financial network would be the ultimate act of sabotage.” Martinsson added.

“Does everyone in this room think that that’s what we’re looking at here? And that something like this is based in a computer in Ystad?” Wallander asked.

“It’s definitely something like this,” Martinsson said. “I’ve never come across anything like it before.”

“Is it harder to break into than the Pentagon?” Alfredsson asked.

Modin narrowed his eyes.

“It’s certainly not any less complicated.”

“I’m not sure how best to proceed in this kind of a situation,” Wallander said.

“I’ll talk to my people in Stockholm,” Alfredsson said. “I’ll send in a report that will later get sent on all over the world. We have to alert the institutions involved so that they can take precautions.”

“If it isn’t already too late,” Modin mumbled.

Everyone heard him, but no one made any comment. Alfredsson left the room in a hurry.

“I still have trouble believing it,” Wallander said.

“Well, whatever it is in Falk’s computer, there are people ready to kill in order to keep the system and countdown going,” Martinsson said.

Wallander pointed at Modin so that Martinsson would understand that he should choose his words with greater care.

“The question is what we can do,” Wallander said. “Is there anything we can do?”

“There’s often a button to push,” Modin said abruptly. “If you infect a computer system with a virus, you often hide it in an innocent and common command. But in order to set it off, several things have to come together at once. The commands often need to be carried out at a precise time, for example.”

“The best thing we can do now is carry on with what we’ve been doing,” Martinsson said. “We need to let the institutions know that they’re in danger of an attack so that they can inspect their security procedures. Alfredsson will handle the rest.”

Martinsson scribbled a few words on a piece of paper. He looked up at Wallander, who bent over to read them:

Wallander nodded. Whoever had been spying on Modin from the road between the fields had known how important he was. Right now he was in the same situation that Sonja Hökberg had been in.

Wallander’s phone rang. Hansson was calling to let him know that the search for the attacker had not yet yielded any results. But they would continue unabated.

“How is Nyberg doing?”

“He’s already comparing fingerprints.”

Hansson was still out near Backåkra, where he would stay for now. He didn’t know where Höglund was.

They ended the conversation. Wallander tried to phone Höglund, but her phone was out of range.

There was a knock on the door, and Irene came in with a box.

“Here’s the food,” she said. “Who’s supposed to take care of the bill? I had to pay the delivery man out of my own pocket.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Wallander said and stretched out his hand for the receipt.

Modin ate. Wallander and Martinsson watched him in silence. Then Wallander’s phone rang again. It was Elvira Lindfeldt. He went out into the hall and closed the door behind him.

“I heard on the radio that shots were fired in an incident close to Ystad,” she said. “And there were policemen involved. I hope that wasn’t you.”

“Not directly,” Wallander said vaguely. “But we have a lot going on right now.”

“It made me worried, that’s all. I had to ask. Now of course I’m getting curious but I won’t ask any more questions.”

“There isn’t much I can tell you,” Wallander said.

“I understand that you don’t have a lot of free time at the moment.”

“It’s too early to say. But I’ll be in touch.”

When the conversation was over Wallander thought about the fact that it had been a long time since anyone had cared about him. Let alone worried about him.

He went back into the room. It was twenty minutes to six. Modin was still eating. Wallander and Martinsson left to get some coffee.

“I forgot to tell you that I cross-checked the list of names I got from Sydkraft. But I didn’t find anything.”

“We didn’t expect to,” Wallander said.

The coffee machine was on the blink again. Martinsson pulled out the plug and then put it in again. Now it was working.

“Is there a computer program inside the coffee machine?” Wallander asked.

“Hardly,” Martinsson said. “Though I guess you can imagine more sophisticated machines that would be controlled with tiny computer chips.”

“What if someone went in and changed the program? Could they change it so tea came out instead of coffee? And milk when someone wanted espresso?”

“Of course.”

“But how would it get triggered? How could you get it to start?”

“Well, you could imagine that a certain date has been entered in. A date and a time, perhaps an interval of an hour. Then the eleventh time that someone presses the button for coffee, the virus is triggered.”

“Why the eleventh?”

“That was just an example. It could have been any number that you’d chosen.”

“Is there anything you can do once that change occurs?”

“You could pull out the plug and restart it,” Martinsson said. “You can hang a sign saying the machine is broken. But the program that runs the machine would have to be replaced.”

“Is this what Modin is talking about?”

“Yes, but on a larger scale.”

“But we have no idea where Falk’s coffee machine is.”

“It could be anywhere in the world.”

“And that would mean that whoever sets off the chain reaction wouldn’t even have to be aware of it.”

“It would even be an advantage if the responsible party was nowhere near where the virus first arises.”

“So we’re looking for the symbolic equivalent of a coffee machine,” Wallander said. He walked over to the window and looked out. It was already dark. Martinsson walked over to where he was.

“I want you to do something,” Wallander said. “I’d like you to write a memo about what we just talked about. The threat of a global financial collapse. Get Alfredsson to help you. Then send it on to Stockholm and all of the internationl police agencies you can think of.”

“If we’re wrong, we’ll be the laughing stock of the world.”

“We have to take that chance. Give me the papers and I’ll sign them.”

Martinsson left. Wallander stayed in the lunchroom, deep in thought. He didn’t notice when Höglund slipped in. He jumped when she turned up at his side.

“You know the poster of that movie,” she said. “The one that you saw in Sonja Hökberg’s closet?”

“The Devil’s Advocate. I have the movie at home, I just haven’t had time to see it.”

“I don’t think the movie is so important, actually,” she said. “But I’ve been thinking about Al Pacino. He resembles someone.”

Wallander looked at her.

“Who does he resemble?”

“The man in her sketch. Carl-Einar Lundberg. He actually looks a little like Al Pacino.”

Wallander realized that she was right. He had seen a picture of Lundberg in a file she had put on his desk. He just hadn’t thought about the resemblance until now. Another detail fell into place.

They sat down at a table. Höglund was tired.

“I went over to talk to Eva Persson,” she said. “I thought I would be able to get something more out of her. Silly me.”

“How was she?”

“She’s still completely nonchalant. That’s the worst thing. I wish she looked like she slept badly and cried at night. But she doesn’t. She just sits there chewing her gum and seems mildly irritated at having to answer my questions.”

“She’s hiding her feelings,” Wallander said. “We just can’t see it.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Wallander filled her in on Modin’s hypothesis of an impending financial collapse.

“We’ve never even been close to something like this,” she said when he finished. “If it’s true.”

“We’ll find out on Monday, I guess. Unless we think of some way to intervene.”

“Do you think we will?”

“Maybe. Martinsson is contacting police all over the world, and Alfredsson is getting in touch with all of the institutions on Falk’s list.”

“There isn’t much time. If it really is set for Monday. And it’s the weekend.”

“There’s never enough time,” Wallander answered.

By nine o’clock, Robert Modin was completely exhausted. They had decided that he was not going to be spending the next few nights at home. But when Martinsson suggested he sleep at the station, he flat-out refused. Wallander thought about calling Sten Widen to see if he could accomodate an extra person, but he decided against it. For security reasons Modin could not spend the night with anyone on the investigative team, since they could also be considered a target. They had to be careful.

Finally, Wallander thought of a person to ask. Elvira Lindfeldt. She was a complete outsider, and it would also give him a chance to see her, if only for a short while.

Wallander didn’t say her name, but he said he would take Robert to a safe place for the night.

He called her shortly before nine-thirty.

“I have a question that may seem a little strange,” he said.

“I’m used to strange questions.”

“Could you take an extra person for the night?”

“Who would that be?”

“Do you remember the young man who came to the restaurant that night?”

“His name was Kolin?”

“Modin.”

“He has nowhere to sleep?”

“I’m only going to say that he needs a place to stay for a few nights.”

“Of course he can stay here. How is he going to get here?”

“I’ll give him a ride. We’ll be there shortly.”

“Do you want anything to eat when you arrive?”

“Some coffee would be nice. That’s all.”

They left the station shortly before ten. When they passed Skurup Wallander was sure no one was following them.

Elvira Lindfeldt slowly put down the receiver. She was happy, in fact more than happy. She was overjoyed. This was an amazing stroke of luck. She thought about Carter, who was about to take off from the Luanda airport.

He would be happy, too.

After all, this was exactly what he had wanted.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

The night of Sunday the nineteenth of October would go down t as one of the worst in Wallander’s life. Afterward he would think back to a near accident that night as a sign. As they passed the exit for Svedala, a car had suddenly decided to overtake him just as a huge truck was bearing down on them in the oncoming lane. Wallander turned his steering wheel as sharply as he could without driving off the road, but it was close. Robert Modin was sleeping in the front seat next to him and didn’t notice anything. But Wallander’s heart was pounding inside his chest.

As he kept driving, his mind returned uneasily to what Höglund had told him about Martinsson and his games. He had an unpleasant feeling of being on trial and not being sure of his own innocence. The anxiety and worry was nagging at him from all sides.

When he exited the highway to Jagersro, Robert Modin woke up.

“We’ll be there soon,” Wallander said.

“I was dreaming,” Modin said. “Someone tried to attack me.”

Wallander found the house easily. It lay in the corner of a housing development that looked like it had been built between the wars. He parked and turned off the engine.

“Who lives here?” Modin asked.

“A friend of mine,” Wallander said. “Her name is Elvira. You’ll be safe here. I’ll send someone to pick you up in the morning.”

“I don’t even have a toothbrush with me,” Modin said.

“We’ll take care of it somehow.”

It was almost eleven o’clock. Wallander had imagined that he would have a cup of coffee, look at her lovely legs, and stay until about midnight.

But it didn’t turn out that way. They had only just gone inside when his phone rang. It was Hansson. Wallander could tell that something was up by the tension in his voice. They had finally found traces of the man they thought had shot at Wallander. Once again it was a person out walking a dog who had helped them, this time by notifying them of a man who seemed to be hiding in the bushes and generally behaw ing strangely Since he had been seeing police cars driving to and fro all day, the dog owner thought it best to call in with his information. The dog owner had told Hansson that the man appeared to have been dressed in a black raincoat.

Wallander quickly thanked Elvira for her hospitality, introduced Modin to her again, and then left. He thought about the curious fact that dog owners had been such a big help during the investigation. Perhaps these civilians were a resource that the police should make more use of in the future? He drove much too fast and soon arrived at the spot north of Sandhammaren that Hansson had described to him. On the way he had stopped at the station and picked up his gun.

It had started raining again. Martinsson arrived a few minutes before Wallander. Police officers in full protective gear were in place, as well as several canine units. The man they were closing in on was located in a small pocket of forest that was bordered on one side by the highway to Skillinge and some open fields on the other. Although Hansson had been very effective in mobilizing police into the area, Wallander immediately realized that the man would have a good chance of being able to get away. They tried to come up with a reasonable plan of attack. While they were discussing their options, something came in on Hansson’s radio. A police patrol toward the north thought they had spotted the suspect. The radio contact broke off. In the distance came the sound of a shot closely followed by another. Then the radio came on again: “The fucker’s shooting at us.” Then silence.

Wallander immediately feared the worst. Martinsson seemed to have disappeared. It took him and Hansson six minutes to reach the spot where the radio transmission had come from. When they saw the patrol car with its lights on they readied their weapons and got out of their own vehicle. The silence was deafening. Wallander shouted out to the others, and to his and Hansson’s great relief there was an answer. They ran over to the patrol car in a crouched position where they found two policemen who were scared out of their wits. One of them was El Sayed, the other Elofsson. The man who had shot at them appeared to be in a clump of trees on the other side of the road. They had been standing next to the car when they heard the sound of breaking twigs. Elofsson had directed his flashlight toward the trees while El Sayed had established radio contact with Hansson. Then the shots had come.

“What’s beyond those trees?” Wallander hissed.

“There’s a path down to the sea,” Elofsson said.

“Are there any houses down there?”

No one knew.

“We’ll try to surround him,” Wallander said. “Now at least we have a better idea of where he is.”

Hansson managed to locate Martinsson and tell him where they were. Meanwhile Wallander dispatched Elofsson and El Sayed deeper into the shadows. The whole time he expected the suspect to turn up alongside the car with his gun cocked.

“What about a helicopter?” Martinsson asked.

“Good idea. Make sure it has strong spotlights. But don’t let it turn up until all of us are in place.”

Martinsson turned to his radio and Wallander carefully looked out at the terrain. Since it was dark, he couldn’t really see anything, and since the wind had picked up it was hard for him to hear anything, either. It was impossible for him to determine if the sounds he heard were real or imagined.

Martinsson crept over to him.

“They’re on their way. Hansson has dispatched a helicopter.” Wallander never had time to answer. At that moment another shot was fired. They steeled themselves.

The shot had come somewhere from the left. Wallander had no idea who the intended target was. He called out to Elofsson, and El Sayed called back. Then he also heard Elfosson’s voice. Wallander knew he had to do something. He called out into the darkness.

“Police! Lay down your weapon!”

Then he repeated the phrase in English.

There was no answer, only the wind.

“I don’t like this,” Martinsson whispered. “Why is he still there shooting at us? Why doesn’t he leave? He must know there are reinforcements on the way.”

Wallander didn’t reply. He had started thinking the same thing. Then they heard police sirens in the distance.

“Why didn’t you tell them to be quiet?”

Wallander didn’t try to hide his irritation.

“Hansson should have known better.”

At the same moment El Sayed cried out. Wallander thought he glimpsed a shadow running across the road and out into the field that lay to the left of the car. Then it was gone.

“He’s getting away,” Wallander hissed.

“Where?”

Wallander pointed in the direction where the shadow had been, but there was no point. Martinsson couldn’t see anything. Wallander realized he had to act fast. If the suspect made it across the field he would reach a larger stretch of forest and then it would be harder to get him. He told Martinsson to move, then he jumped into the car, started it, and pulled it around violently. He hit something but didn’t stop to look what it was. But now the headlights were shining straight out into the field.

The man was out there. When the light hit him he stopped and turned around. The raincoat flapped in the wind. Wallander saw the man raise one arm. He threw himself to the side. The bullet went straight through the windshield. Wallander rolled out of the car while he yelled to the others to get down. Another shot rang out. It took out a headlight. Wallander wondered if the man was just a lucky shot or if he had meant to hit it. It was much harder to see now.

The police sirens were getting closer. Suddenly Wallander was afraid that the approaching cars were going to be a target. He yelled out to Martinsson to radio the cars and tell them not to approach until they received an all-clear.

“I’ve dropped the radio,” Martinsson said. “I can’t find it in this shit.”

The man in the field was quickly disappearing. Wallander saw him trip and almost fall. Wallander knew he had to make a quick decision. He got to his feet.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“We have to take him,” Wallander said.

“We have to surround him first.”

“Before we do that, he’ll get away.”

Wallander looked at Martinsson, who shook his head. Then he started running. The mud immediately started caking up under his shoes. The man was beyond the reach of the light now. Wallander stopped and made sure his gun was cocked. Behind him he heard Martinsson shouting to El Sayed and Elofsson. Wallander stayed slightly outside the light from the remaining headlight and sped up. Then one of his shoes sank down in the mud and came off. Wallander angrily ripped off the other. His feet immediately became cold and wet, but it was easier to walk over the mud. He suddenly caught sight of the man, who was also having trouble crossing the plowed mud.

The distance between them was still so great that Wallander did not dare try to immobilize him by shooting at his legs. In the distance he heard a helicopter, but it did not come closer. It seemed to be awaiting further orders. They were out in the middle of the field now and the light from the car was very weak. Wallander knew he had to do something, he just didn’t know what. He was a mediocre shot. The man in front of him had missed his mark twice in a row, but Wallander still sensed he was better with his weapon than Wallander was with his. He had hit the headlight from very far away. Wallander frantically tried to think of something that would work. He didn’t understand why neither Hansson nor Martinsson ordered the helicopter to advance.

Suddenly the man tripped and fell. Wallander stopped. Then he saw that the man was looking for something. It took Wallander a split second to understand that he had dropped his gun and was looking for it. They were about thirty meters apart. I don’t have enough time, he thought, but then he was running and jumping across the stiff furrows. A few times he almost lost his balance. Then the man saw him. Even though it was dark, Wallander could tell he looked Asian.

Wallander’s left foot slipped out from under him as if he were on an ice floe. He didn’t manage to recover and ended up falling headfirst into the mud. At that moment his opponent found his gun. Wallander had one knee up and saw that the gun was aimed straight at him. Wallander pulled his own trigger. The gun didn’t work. He tried again with the same result. In a last desperate attempt to survive, Wallander threw himself to the side and tried to sink down into the mud. That was when the shot was fired. Wallander flinched, but he had not been hit. He lay motionless and waited for his opponent to fire again. But nothing happened. Wallander had no sense of how long he lay there. He felt as if he were watching himself from a distance, observing the situation. So this was how it would end: a meaningless death in a muddy field. This is where he had brought his dreams and intentions. Now nothing would come of them. He would disappear into the final darkness with his face pressed down into the cold wet clay, and he wasn’t even wearing any shoes.

It was only when he heard the sound of a rapidly approaching helicopter that he dared to think he might survive. He carefully looked up.

The man lay on his back with his arms spread. Wallander got up and slowly walked closer. He could see the floodlights on the helicopter starting to search the far end of the field. Some dogs were barking and somewhere far away he heard Martinsson’s voice.

The man was dead. The shot Wallander had heard had not been meant for him after all. The man lying in the mud had shot himself in the temple. Wallander was overcome by a sudden onset of nausea and dizziness and had to sit down. His clothes were cold and wet and now he finally started shaking.

Wallander looked at the body in front of him. He didn’t know who this man was or why he had come to Ystad, but his death was a relief. This was the man who had entered Falk’s apartment when Wallander was there waiting for Marianne Falk. He had tried to shoot Wallander on two separate occasions. Most likely he had also dragged Sonja Hökberg to the power substation, and thrown Jonas Landahl into the propeller axle on the Polish ferry. There were many question marks, but as Wallander sat there on the muddy field he felt that at least something had come to an end.

Now Wallander no longer had to fear for his colleagues’ or Robert Modin’s safety.

There was no way for him to know that he was wrong about this assumption. It was something he would only come to understand in time.

Martinsson was the first person to reach Wallander. The latter stood up. Elofsson was also nearby. Wallander asked him to find his shoes and bring them over.

“Did you shoot him?” Martinsson asked in disbelief.

Wallander shook his head.

“No, he shot himself. If he hadn’t, I wouldn’t be standing here right now.”

Lisa Holgersson suddenly appeared, as if out of thin air. Wallander let Martinsson do the explainaing. Elofsson turned up with Wallander’s shoes, which were covered in thick clay. Wallander wanted to get away as soon as possible. Not only to be able to change his clothes, but to get away from the memory of what it was like to lie there in the mud expecting the end. The depressingly pathetic end.

Somewhere deep inside there was probably a flicker of happiness, but for the moment a feeling of emptiness dominated.

The helicopter was gone now. Hansson had dismissed it, and the large operation was now being dismantled. The only people left were the team who were going to do the investigation surrounding the suspect’s death.

Hansson made his way through the mud. He was wearing bright orange boots.

“You should go home,” he said, looking at Wallander.

Wallander nodded and started walking the same way he had come. All around him he saw the flickering of flashlights. Several times he almost tripped.

Shortly before he got to the road, Holgersson caught up with him.

“I think I have a fairly complete picture of what happened,” she said. “But tomorrow we’ll have to have a thorough debriefing. It’s lucky things turned out as well as they did.”

“Soon we should be able to determine if this is the individual who was responsible for Sonja Hokberg’s and Jonas Landahl’s deaths.”

“But why did all of this happen?”

“We don’t know why, but Falk is in the center of it all. Or rather, whatever is in his computer.”

“This hypothesis still seems unfounded to me,” Holgersson said.

“There’s no alternative, as far as I see.”

Wallander had no more energy for this discussion.

“I have to get into some dry clothes,” he said. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m heading home now.”

“One more thing,” she said. “I have to say this to you. It was completely irresponsible of you to have gone after this man alone. You should have taken Martinsson along as backup.”

“Everything happened so fast.”

“But you should not have ordered him to stay behind.”

Wallander had been brushing clay from his clothes. Now he looked up.

“Ordered him?”

“Yes, ordered him to stand back while you went in. You know as well as I do that one of the most basic rules of police work is never to act alone.”

Wallander had forgotten all about the mud now.

“Who says I ordered him to stay behind?”

“It has emerged from various reports.”

Wallander knew there was only one possible explanation for this version of the events. Martinsson must have said this to her. Elofsson and El Sayed had been too far back to be able to hear anything.

“Perhaps we should talk about this tomorrow,” he said.

“I had to bring this up with you right away,” she said. “It’s my duty as your commanding officer. You’re in a delicate enough situation as it is.”

She left him and continued on toward the road.

Wallander realized he was trembling with fury. Martinsson had lied. He claimed Wallander had ordered him not to follow him out onto the field, where Wallander had subsequently become trapped and had thought he was going to die.

He looked up and saw that Martinsson and Hansson were on their way toward him. The light from their flashlights bobbed up and down. From the other direction he heard Holgersson start up her car and drive away.

Martinsson and Hansson stopped when they reached him.

“Could you hold Martinsson’s flashlight for a moment?” Wallander asked, looking at Hansson.

“Why?”

“Just do it, please.”

Martinsson handed Hansson his flashlight. Wallander took a step forward and hit Martinsson in the face. However, since it was hard to judge the distance between them in the poor light from the flashlights, the blow didn’t land squarely on his jaw as intended. It was more of a gentle nudge.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“What the hell are you doing?” Wallander yelled back.

Then he threw himself on Martinsson and they fell back into the mud. Hansson tried to get between them but slipped. One of the flashlights went out, the other landed some distance away.

“You told Holgersson I ordered you to stay behind! You’ve been spreading lies about me this whole time!”

Wallander pushed Martinsson away and stood up. Hansson was also standing. A dog was barking in the background.

“You’ve been going behind my back,” Wallander continued, and heard that his voice had become completely steady.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You go behind my back and say that I’m a bad at my job. You sneak away into Holgersson’s office when you think no one sees you.”

Hansson entered the conversation for the first time.

“What is going on between you two?”

“We’re discussing the issue of good teamwork,” Wallander answered. “If it’s best to say what you think to someone’s face, or whether you should go behind someone’s back and complain about them to their superior officer.”

“I still don’t get it,” Hansson said.

Wallander sighed. He saw no point in dragging this out.

“That was all I wanted to say,” he said and threw a flashlight at Martinsson’s feet.

Then he walked over to a patrol car and asked the officer behind the wheel to take him home.

He took a bath and then went and sat in the kitchen. It was close to three o’clock. He tried to think, but his head still felt empty. He went to bed but couldn’t sleep. His thoughts returned to the field, and to the terror he had experienced as he lay with his face pressed into the wet clay. The intense sense of humiliation at dying without his shoes on. And then his confrontation with Martinsson.

I’ve reached my limit, he thought. Not only in relation to Martinsson but perhaps in relation to everything I do.

He wondered what the consequences of his fight with Martinsson would be. He had struck him in the face. It would come down to word against word, just like the case with Eva Persson and her mother. Holgersson had already proved that she put greater stock in Martinsson’s accounts than his own. And now Wallander had shown himself guilty of excessive force for the second time in only two weeks.

As he lay in the dark, he wondered if he regretted his behavior. He couldn’t honestly say that he did. It was motivated by a sense of personal dignity. The assault had been a necessary reaction to Martinsson’s betrayal. All of the rage that he had been feeling since Höglund had told him about Martinsson had finally bubbled up to the surface.

It was shortly after four when he finally fell asleep.

It was Sunday, the nineteenth of October.

Carter landed in Lisbon on the TAP Portuguese Airlines flight 553 at exactly six thirty in the morning. The connecting flight to Copenhagen was leaving at eight fifteen. As usual, his entry into Europe disturbed him. He felt protected in Africa. Here he was in foreign territory.

At home he had looked carefully at his selection of passports and finally settled on the identity of Lukas Habermann, a German citizen born in Kassel in 1939. After going through customs in Portugal, he went into the nearest bathroom and cut the passport into small pieces that he then flushed down the toilet. He would continue his journey as the Englishman Richard Stanton, born in Oxford in 1940. He put on another coat and slicked his hair down with water. After checking his luggage to Copenhagen, he went through the passport control again, this time studiously avoiding the line to the customs officer from the time before. He did not run into any problems. He walked through the terminal until he reached an area that was under construction. Since it was Sunday, there were no workers around. He took out his cell phone only after making sure that he was alone.

She answered immediately. He didn’t like talking on the phone, so he only asked short questions and received equally brief and concise answers.

She was not able to tell him anything about Cheng’s whereabouts. He was supposed to have contacted her in the early evening, but he had never called.

Carter listened to her big news with some skepticism. He could not fully believe that it was true. He was not used to being lucky.

But he was finally convinced. Robert Modin had indeed been brought straight into their trap.

After the conversation was over, Carter thought about Cheng. Something must have happened to him. But on the other hand, they now had access to Modin, and he was their biggest threat.

Carter put away his phone and went to the executive lounge, where he had an apple and a cup of tea.

The plane to Copenhagen took off five minutes later than scheduled.

Carter sat in seat 3D, on the aisle. The window seat made him feel too trapped.

He told the flight attendant that he would not be requiring breakfast.

Then he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Wallander and Martinsson met in the corridor outside the lunchroom at the police station at exactly eight o’clock on

Sunday morning. It was as if they had decided on the time and place in advance. Since they approached the lunchroom from opposite ends of the corridor, Wallander felt as if they were participating in a duel. But instead of drawing pistols, they nodded curtly at each other and went in to get coffee. The coffee machine had broken down again. They read the handwritten sign that had been affixed to the front. Martinsson had a black eye and his lower lip was swollen.

“I’m going to get you for what you did,” Martinsson said. “But first we have to finish this case.”

“It was wrong of me to hit you,” Wallander said. “But that’s the only thing I’ll take back.”

They said nothing more about what had happened. Hansson came in and stared nervously at them.

Wallander suggested that they may as well have their meeting in the lunchroom rather than move to a conference room. Hansson put on a pot of water and offered to make them coffee from his private stash. Just as they were pouring it out, Höglund arrived. Wallander assumed it must be Hansson who had notified her of the latest events, but it turned out to be Martinsson. Wallander gathered that he had said nothing about the fight, but he noticed that Martinsson looked at her with a new coldness. He must have spent the brief night figuring out just who could have snitched on him to Wallander.

Once Alfredsson had joined them, they were ready to begin the meeting. Wallander asked Hansson to inform Viktorsson of the night’s events. In the present situation it was even more important that the district attorney’s office was kept up to date. There would probably be a press conference later in the day, but Chief Holgersson would have to take care of it. Wallander asked Höglund to assist her if she had time. She looked surprised.

“But I wasn’t even there.”

“You don’t need to say anything. I just want you there so you can hear what Holgersson says. Especially if she happens to say something stupid.”

There was a stunned silence in the room after his last comment. No one had heard him openly criticize Holgersson before. It was not premeditated on his part; it had just slipped out. He felt another wave of exhaustion, of being burned out, maybe even old. Of course, his age gave him an excuse for speaking plainly.

He moved on to the most pressing matter.

“We have to concentrate our efforts on Falk’s computer. Whatever is programmed into it is going to take effect on the twentieth of October. We therefore have less than sixteen hours to figure out what that is.”

“Where is Modin?” Hansson asked.

Wallander drained the last of his coffee and got up.

“I’m going to pick him up. Let’s get going, everybody.”

As they filed out of the lunchroom Höglund grabbed his arm, but he tried to shake her off.

“Not now. I have to get Modin.”

“Where is he?”

“With a friend of mine.”

“Can nobody else get him?”

“Sure they could. But I need the time to collect my thoughts. We need to figure out how to use the short amount of time we have most effectively. What does it mean that Cheng is dead?”

“That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Wallander stopped.

“All right,” he said. “You have exactly five minutes.”

“It seems as if we haven’t posed the most important question.”

“And what might that be?”

“Why he shot himself and not you.”

Wallander was getting irritated. He was irritated at everything and everyone and made no attempt to hide it.

“And what’s your opinion?”

“I wasn’t there. I don’t know how things looked out there or exactly what happened. But I know that it takes a lot, even for a person like that, to actually pull the trigger on himself.”

“And how do you know this?”

“You have to admit I have some experience after all these years.”

Wallander knew he was lecturing her as he answered. He couldn’t help it.

“The question is what your experience is really worth in this case. This person killed at least two people before he died, and he wouldn’t have hesitated one moment to kill me. We don’t know what was driving him, but he must have been a completely ruthless person. What happened was that he heard the helicopter approaching and he knew he wasn’t going to get away in time. We know the people involved in this case are fanatical in some way. In this instance that fanaticism was turned on himself.”

Höglund wanted to say something, but Wallander was already on his way out the front doors.

“I have to get Modin,” he said. “We can talk more later. If our world still exists, that is.”

Wallander left the station. It was a quarter to nine and he was in a hurry. He drove at a very high speed and inadvertently ran over a hare. He tried to swerve but one of his back wheels hit the animal. He could see its legs jerking when he looked back in the rearview mirror. But he didn’t stop.

He reached the house in Jagersro at twenty minutes to ten. Elvira opened the door very quickly after he rang the bell. She was already fully dressed, but Wallander sensed that she was very tired. In some way she seemed different than when he had seen her last. But her smile was the same. She asked if he wanted a cup of coffee. Wallander looked past her and saw Robert Modin drinking a cup of tea in the kitchen. Wallander wanted nothing more than to drink a cup of coffee with her but declined her offer. They had so little time. She insisted, took his arm, and almost pushed him into the kitchen. Wallander also saw her cast a quick glance at her watch. That made him suspicious. She wants me to stay, he thought. But not too long. She’s expecting someone else later. He declined the coffee again and told Modin to get ready.

“People who are always in a hurry make me nervous,” she complained after Modin had left the kitchen.

“Then you’ve found my first flaw,” Wallander said. “I’m sorry about this, but it can’t be helped. We need Modin in Ystad right away.”

“What is it that is so urgent?”

“I haven’t got time to explain,” Wallander said. “Let me just say that we’re a bit worried about the twentieth of October. And that’s tomorrow.”

Even though Wallander was tired, he noticed the slight cloud of worry that appeared in her face. Then she smiled again. Wallander wondered if she was afraid, but then he dismissed the whole thing as imagination.

Modin came down the stairs. He carried a small computer under each arm.

“And when will I be seeing you again?” she asked.

“I’ll call you,” Wallander said. “I don’t know yet.”

Wallander drove Modin back to Ystad. He stuck to a slightly slower speed.

“I woke up early,” Modin said. “I had some new ideas that I’d like to try out.”

Wallander wondered if he should tell him what had happened during the night, but he decided to wait. Right now it was important for Modin to stay focused. They kept driving in silence. Wallander realized that it was pointless for him to ask Modin about his ideas, since he wouldn’t understand the explanations.

They drove past the place where Wallander had run over the hare. A flock of crows took off as they approached. The hare was already dismembered to the point of unrecognizability. Wallander told Modin that he was one who had run it over.

“You always see hundreds of run-over hares along this road,” Wallander remarked. “But it’s only once you kill one yourself that you really see it.”

Modin suddenly looked at him.

“Could you say that last part again? About the hare?”

Wallander repeated what he had said.

“Exactly,” Modin said thoughtfully. “That’s it. Of course.”

Wallander looked inquiringly at him.

“I’m thinking about what we’re looking for in Falk’s computer,” Modin explained. “The way to think about it may be to look for something we’ve seen a hundred times without really noticing.”

Then Modin sunk back into thought. Wallander was still not sure he had understood this insight.

At eleven o’clock he stopped the car by Runnerstrom Square. Wallander knew that from here on out he was dependent on what Alfredsson and Modin were able to accomplish, with Martinsson’s assistance. The best he could do would be to try to maintain the larger perspective and not think he would be able to dive into the electronic world with the others. He hoped Martinsson and Alfredsson had the good sense not to tell Modin about what had happened last night. He should really have taken Martinsson aside and told him that Modin knew nothing about the events, but he couldn’t stand talking to him any more than absolutely necessary.

“It’s eleven o’clock,” he said when they had gathered around the desk. “That means we have thirteen hours left until it is officially the twentieth of October. Time is of the essence, in other words.”

“Nyberg called,” Martinsson said, interrupting him.

“What did he have to say for himself?”

“Not much. The weapon was a Makarov, nine millimeter. He thought it would turn out to be the same weapon used in the apartment on Apelbergsgatan.”

“Did the man have any identification?”

“He had three different passports. Korean, Thai and, strangely enough, one from Romania.”

“None from Angola?”

“Nope.”

“I’m going to talk to Nyberg.”

Wallander returned to his general remarks. Modin sat impatiently in front of the computer.

“We only have thirteen hours left until the twentieth of October,” he continued. “And right now we have three main points of interest. Everything else can wait.”

Wallander looked around. Martinsson’s face was devoid of expression. The swelling at his lower lip was starting to turn blue.

“The first question is if the twentieth of October is the real date,” Wallander said. “If it is, what will happen? The third question that follows from this is, if something is about to happen, how can we prevent it? Nothing else matters except these three things.”

Wallander finished.

“There haven’t been any responses from abroad,” Alfredsson said.

Wallander suddenly remembered the paper he should have signed and authorized before it was sent out to police organizations across the world.

Martinsson must have read his mind.

“I signed it. Just to save time.”

Wallander nodded.

“And no one has written back or sent further inquiries?”

“Nothing yet. But it hasn’t been long, and it’s still Sunday.”

“That means that we’re on our own for now.”

Then Wallander looked at Modin.

“Robert told me on the way over that he had some new ideas. Hopefully they will lead us to new information.”

“I’m convinced it’s the twentieth of October,” Modin said.

“Then your job is to convince the rest of us.”

“I need an hour,” Modin said.

“We have thirteen,” Wallander said. “And let us all assume for now that we really don’t have more than that.”

Wallander walked away. The best thing he could do now was leave them alone. He drove to the station.

What is it I’ve overlooked? he thought. Is there a clue in all of this that could bring Everything together in a single stroke? The thoughts in his head tumbled around without connecting. Then he thought back to when he had seen Elvira in Malmö. She had seemed different. He couldn’t say exactly what it was, but he knew it was something, and it worried him. The last thing he wanted was for her to start finding fault with him at this stage. Perhaps taking Robert to her had been a mistake. Perhaps he had involved her too quickly and too abruptly to the realities of his life.

He tried to shake off these thoughts. When he got to the station, he tried to find Hansson. He was sitting in his office researching companies from a list that Martinsson had compiled. Wallander asked him how it was going and Hansson shook his head despondently.

“Nothing hangs together,” he said. “The only thing that seems to be a common denominator is that most of them are financial institutions. But there’s also a telecommunications firm and a satellite company.”

Wallander frowned.

“What was the last one?”

“A satellite company in Atlanta, Telsat Communications. As far as I can tell, they rent broadcasting space on a number of communications satellites.”

“Which would fit with the field of telecommunications.”

“I suppose you can even get it to fit with the financial companies, from the standpoint that they’re also involved in the large-scale electronic transfer of sums.”

Wallander thought of something.

“Can you see if any of the company’s satellites cover Angola?”

Hansson typed something into the computer. Wallander noticed that he had to wait longer than he usually did with Martinsson.

“Their satellite coverage covers the globe,” he said finally. “Even to the poles.”

Wallander nodded.

“It may mean something,” he said. “Call Martinsson and tell him.”

Hansson took the opportunity to ask something else.

“What was it that happened out there on the field anyway?”

“Martinsson is full of shit,” Wallander said. “But we won’t go into that right now.”

Chief Holgersson organized a hasty press conference for two o’clock in the afternoon. She had tried to reach Wallander beforehand, but he’d made himself unavailable and instructed Höglund to say he was out of the office. Now he stood in front of his window for a long time and stared at the water tower. The clouds had disappeared. It was a cold and clear October day.

At three o’clock he couldn’t stand it any longer and drove down to Runnerström Square, and walked in on an intense debate about how best to interpret a new combination of numbers. When Modin tried to involve Wallander, the latter simply shook his head.

At five he went out and had a hamburger. When he came back to the station he called Elvira, but there was no answer, not even an answering machine. He was immediately suspicious again, but too tired and distracted to hang on to these thoughts.

At half past six Ebba turned up unexpectedly. She had some food with her for Modin. Wallander asked Hansson to drive her down to Runnerström Square. Afterward he realized he hadn’t thanked her enough.

At seven he called the team at Runnerström Square and Martinsson answered. Their conversation was brief. The team were not yet able to answer a single one of Wallander’s questions. He put down the phone and went to find Hansson, who was sitting in front of the computer with bloodshot eyes. Wallander asked if there had been any messages from the international community, and Hansson had only one word in reply: “Nothing.”

At that moment Wallander was overcome by rage. He grabbed one of the chairs in Hansson’s office and threw it against the wall. Then he left the room.

At eight o’clock he was back in Hansson’s office.

“Let’s go down to Runnerström Square,” he said. “We can’t go on like this. We have to get an idea of where we stand.”

They stopped by Höglund’s office on the way out. She was half asleep at her desk. They drove in silence. When they reached the apartment they saw Modin seated against the wall, Martinsson on his folding chair, and Alfredsson lying on the floor. Wallander asked himself if he had ever led a more exhausted and dispirited team. He knew that the physical exhaustion was due more to their lack of progress rather than to the events of the night before. If only they had come a few steps closer to the truth, if only they could break down the wall, they could each summon sufficient energy to see it through. But for now the dominant mood was one of hopelessness.

Wallander sat down on the chair in front of the computer. The others gathered around him, except Martinsson, who positioned himself in the background.

“Let’s sum up where we are,” he said. “What is the situation right now?”

“There are several indications that the date in question is the twentieth of October,” Alfredsson said. “But we have no indications of a precise time for the event, so we cannot know if it will begin on the stroke of midnight or later. Quite possibly the intended event is a form of computer virus that targets all of these financial institutions we’ve identified. Since they are mostly large and powerful financial institutions, we imagine the event has something to do with money, but if we’re talking about a form of electronic bank robbery or not we don’t know.”

“What would be the worst thing that could happen?” Wallander asked.

“Total collapse of the world financial markets.”

“But is that even possible?”

“We’ve been through this point before. If there were a significant enough disruption of the markets or a severe fluctuation in the dollar, for example, it could incite a panic in the public that could be hard to control.”

“That’s what’s going to happen,” Modin said.

Everyone stared at him. He was sitting on the floor next to Wallander with his legs crossed.

“Why do you say that? Do you know it for a fact?”

“No, not for a fact. But I think this is going to be so big we can’t even imagine it. We’re not going to be able to deduce what’s going to happen before it’s too late.”

“How does the whole thing start? Isn’t there a starting point, some kind of button that needs to be pressed?”

“I imagine it will be started by some action that’s so ordinary we would have trouble accepting it.”

“The hypothetical coffee machine,” Martinsson said.

Wallander was quiet. He looked around.

“The only thing we can do right now is keep going,” he said. “We don’t have a choice.”

“I left some diskettes in Malmö,” Modin said. “I need them in order to keep working.”

“I’ll send out a car to get them for you.”

“I’ll go too,” Modin said. “I need to get out. And I know of a store in Malmö that stays open late and has the kind of food I like.”

Wallander nodded and got up. Hansson called for a patrol car that would take Modin to Malmö. Wallander called Elvira. The line was busy. He tried again. Now she answered. He told her what had happened, that Modin needed to come by and pick up the diskettes he had left behind. She said it was no problem. Her voice sounded normal now.

“Can I expect to see you as well?” she asked.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have the time right now.”

“I won’t ask you why.”

“Thank you. It would take too long to explain.”

Alfredsson and Martinsson were leaning over Falk’s computer again. Wallander, Hansson, and Höglund returned to the station. When Wallander reached his office, the phone rang. It was the reception desk, telling him he had a visitor.

“Who is it and what is it about?” Wallander asked. “I don’t have any time right now.”

“It’s someone who says she’s your neighbor. A Mrs. Hartman.”

Wallander immediately worried that something had happened. A few years ago there had been a bad water leak in his apartment. Mrs. Hartman was a widow who lived in the apartment beneath his. That time she had called him at the station.

“I’ll be right there,” Wallander said and hung up.

When he reached the waiting area, Mrs. Hartman was able to assuage his fears. There was no water leak, just a letter for him that had been delivered to her.

“It must be the mailman,” she complained. “It probably came on Friday, but I’ve been away this whole time and only returned earlier today. I just thought it might be important, that’s all.”

“You shouldn’t have taken the trouble of coming down here,” Wallander said. “I rarely get mail that is so important it can’t wait.”

She handed him the letter. There was no return address on the envelope. After Mrs. Hartman had left, Wallander went back to his room and opened the letter. To his surprise he saw it was a notice from the dating service thanking him for his subscription and assuring him that they would forward any replies as they arrived.

Wallander crumpled the piece of paper and threw it in the trash. For the next couple of seconds his mind was a total blank. Then he frowned, took out the letter from the trash, smoothed it, and read it again. Then he looked for the envelope, still without knowing exactly why. He stared at the postmark for a long time. The letter had been posted on Thursday.

His mind was still empty.

Thursday. But at that point he had already received a reply from Elvira Lindfeldt. Her letter had arrived in an envelope that had been brought directly to his door. A letter without a postmark of any kind.

His thoughts were swirling around in his head.

Then he turned and looked at his computer. He wondered if he was going crazy. Then he forced himself to think logically and clearly. As he kept staring at his computer, a picture started to emerge. A plausible sequence of events. It was horrifying.

He ran out into the corridor and into Hansson’s office.

“Call the patrol car!” he shouted as soon as he came in. Hansson jerked back and stared at him.

“Which patrol car?”

“The one that took Modin to Malmö.”

“Why?”

“Just do it. Quickly!”

Hansson grabbed the phone. He got through to them in less than two minutes.

“They’re on their way back,” he said putting the phone down. Wallander breathed a sigh of relief.

“But they left Modin at the house.”

Wallander felt as if he had been punched in the stomach.

“Why did they do that?”

“Apparently he came out and told them that he was going to keep working from the house.”

Wallander didn’t move. His heart was beating very hard. He still had trouble believing that it was true. But he himself had suggested the risk of someone breaking into their computers on an earlier occasion. These break-ins weren’t necessarily limited to material surrounding the investigation. Someone could just as easily access more personal information — such as a letter that someone sent to a dating service.

“Take your gun with you,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

“Where to?”

“Malmö.”

Wallander tried to explain the situation along the way, but Hansson seemed to have trouble understanding the full story. Wallander kept asking him to try Elvira’s number, but there was no answer. Wallander put the police siren on the roof and increased his speed. He prayed silently to all the gods he could think of to spare Modin’s life. But he already feared the worst.

They stopped in front of the house shortly after ten o’clock. The house was dark. They stepped out of the car. Wallander asked Hansson to wait in the shadows down by the gate. Then he cocked his gun and walked up the path. When he reached the front door, he stopped and listened. Then he rang the bell. There was no answer. He rang again. Then he felt the doorknob. It was unlocked. He gestured for Hansson to come up.

“We should send for reinforcements,” Hansson hissed.

“There’s no time.”

Wallander slowly opened the door. He listened. He didn’t know what was waiting for them in the dark. He remembered that the light switch was on the wall to the left of the door, and after fumbling around for a while he found it. As soon as the light came on he took a step to the side and crouched down.

The hall was empty.

Some light fell into the living room. He could see that Elvira was sitting on the sofa. She was looking at him. Wallander took a deep breath. She didn’t move. Wallander knew that she was dead. He called out to Hansson. They carefully went into the living room.

She had been shot in the neck. The pale yellow sofa was drenched in blood.

Then they searched the house, but they didn’t find anything.

Robert Modin was gone. Wallander knew that could only mean one thing.

Someone had been waiting for him in the house.

The man in the field had not been working alone.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

He didn’t know what it was that kept him going that night. He imagined it was equal parts self-reproach and rage. But the overriding emotion was his fear for what might have happened to Modin. His first terrified thought when he realized that Elvira was dead was that Modin had also been killed. But once they had searched the house and established that it was empty, Wallander realized that Modin might still be alive. Everything up to this point in the case seemed to have been about concealment and secrets, and that must be the reason for Modin’s abduction as well. Wallander didn’t have to remind himself of Sonja Hökberg’s and Jonas Landahl’s fates. But this was not precisely the same situation. That time the police had not known what was going to happen. Now that they knew more, they had a better starting point, even though they didn’t yet know what had happened to Modin.

Wallander also had to acknowledge that part of what was fueling him that night was his sense of betrayal, and his bitter disappointment that life had once more cheated him out of the promise of companionship. He could not claim to miss Elvira herself. Her death had mainly frightened him. She had accessed his letter to the dating service and approached him with the intention of tricking and manipulating him. And he had been thoroughly taken in. It had been a masterful performance. The humiliation was intense. The rage that coursed through him came from many different sources at once.

But Hansson would later tell him how collected and calm he had seemed. His evaluation of the situation and his suggested course of action had been quick and impressive.

Wallander had realized he needed to return to Ystad as soon as possible. That was where the heart of the case still was. Hansson would stay in the house, alert the Malmö police, and fill them in as necessary.

But Hansson was also to do something else. Wallander had been very firm on this matter. Even though it was the middle of the night, he wanted Hansson to try to find out more about Elvira Lindfeldt’s background. Was there anything that linked her to Angola? Who did she know in Malmö?

“Who was she, anyway?” Hansson asked. “Why was Modin here? How did you know her?”

Wallander didn’t answer, and Hansson never repeated the question. Afterward he would sometimes ask people about it when Wallander was not present. He discussed the fact that Wallander must have known her since he placed Modin in her care. But no one knew anything about this mysterious woman. Despite the intensive investigations that they conducted, there was always the sense that her relationship to Wallander was not a matter to be delved into. No one ever found out exactly what had happened.

Wallander left Hansson and returned to Ystad. He concentrated on a single question in his mind: What had happened to Modin?

As Wallander drove through the night he had a feeling that the impending catastrophe was very close. What it was exactly that needed to be stopped, and how he was going to prevent it, he was not sure. The most important thing was saving Modin’s life. Wallander drove at a ridiculous speed. He had asked Hansson to call ahead and let the others know he was on his way. Hansson had asked if he should call and wake up Chief Holgersson, and Wallander had lost his temper and screamed at him. He did not want him to call her. It was the first time he showed some of the intense strain that he was under.

At half past one, Wallander slowed down and turned into the station parking lot. He shivered from the cold as he ran toward the front doors.

The others were waiting for him in the conference room. Martinsson, Höglund, and Alfredsson were already there, with Nyberg on his way. Höglund handed him a cup of coffee that he almost immediately managed to spill down the front of his trousers.

Then he got down to business. Robert Modin had disappeared without a trace, and the woman he had been staying with had been found murdered.

“The first conclusion we can draw,” Wallander said, “is that the man in the field was not working alone. It was a fatal mistake to assume that this was the case. I should have realized it earlier.”

Höglund was the one who asked the inevitable question.

“Who was she?”

“Her name was Elvira Lindfeldt,” Wallander said. “She was an acquaintance of mine.”

“But how did she know Modin was coming by tonight?”

“We’ll have to tackle that question later.”

Did they believe him? Wallander thought he had lied convincingly but he couldn’t tell. He knew he should have told them about sending in the ad to the dating service, and that someone must have broken into his computer and read the letter. But he didn’t say any of these things. He tried to tell himself, in his own defense, that the most important thing was finding Modin.

At this point the door opened and Nyberg came in. His pajama top peeked out from under his sport coat.

“What the hell happened?” he asked. “Hansson called from Malmö and seemed out of his mind. It was impossible to understand a word he was saying.”

“Sit down,” Wallander said. “It’s going to be a long night.”

Then he nodded to Höglund, who summarized the current situation for Nyberg.

“Don’t the Malmö police have their own forensic team?” Nyberg asked.

“I want you to go out there,” Wallander said. “Not only in case anything else turns up but also just so I can hear what you think.”

Nyberg nodded without saying anything. Then he took out a comb and started pulling it through his unruly thinning hair.

Wallander continued.

“There is one more conclusion we can draw here, and it is simply this: something else is going to happen. And this something is somehow based here in Ystad.”

He looked over at Martinsson.

“I take it someone is still stationed outside Runnerström Square?”

“No, the surveillance has been canceled.”

“Who the hell made that call?”

“Viktorsson thought it was a waste of our resources.”

“Well, I want a car reposted there immediately. I canceled the surveillance of Apelbergsgatan, which maybe was a mistake. I think I want a car there, too, from now on.”

Martinsson left the room, and Wallander knew he would see to it that the patrol cars were dispatched immediately.

They waited in silence for his return. Höglund offered Nyberg, who was still combing his hair, her make-up mirror so he could see what he was doing but he simply growled at her. Martinsson came back.

“Done.”

“What we’re looking for is the catalyst,” Wallander said. “It could be something as simple as Falk’s death. At least that’s how I see it. As long as he was alive, everything was in control. But then he died, and everything threatened to unravel.”

Höglund raised her hand.

“Do we know for sure that Falk died from natural causes?”

“I think it must have been natural causes. My conclusion is based on the fact that Falk’s death was unexpected. Falk was in excellent health. But he died, and that’s what started the chain reaction. If Falk had continued to live, Sonja Hökberg would have been tried and convicted of Lundberg’s death. Neither she nor Jonas Landahl would have been killed. Landahl would have kept running errands for Falk. And we would have had no idea of whatever it is that Falk and his companions were planning.”

“So it’s only thanks to his death that we know something is going to happen, something that might affect the whole world?”

“That’s how I see it, yes. If someone else has a better hypothesis, I’d like to hear it.”

No one had anything to say.

Alfredsson took out his briefcase and poured out a number of loose papers, some torn, some folded in half.

“These are Modin’s notes,” he said. “They were lying in a corner and I gathered them up. Do you think it’s worth our time to go through them?”

“That will be up to you and Martinsson,” Wallander said. “You are the only two who will understand what he’s talking about.”

The phone rang and Höglund answered. She handed the receiver to Wallander, saying it was Hansson.

“A neighbor claims she heard a car drive away with squealing tires at about nine-thirty,” he said. “But that’s all we have been able to establish. No one seems to have seen or heard anything else. Not even the shots.”

“There was more than one?”

“The doctor says she was shot twice in the neck. There are two entry wounds.”

Wallander felt sick to his stomach. He forced himself to swallow hard.

“Are you still there?”

“I’m here. No one heard the shots?”

“At least not the immediate neighbors, and they’re the only ones we’ve had time to wake up so far.”

“Who is leading the work down there?”

“A guy named Forsman. I’ve never met him before.”

Wallander couldn’t recall hearing the name, either.

“What does he say?”

“He says he has trouble getting a coherent picture from what I tell him. There’s no motive, for a start.”

“You’ll have to placate him the best you can. We don’t have time to fill him in right now.”

“There was one more thing,” Hansson said. “Didn’t Modin say he was on his way down here to pick up some diskettes?”

“That was what he said.”

“I think I know what room he was staying in, but there are no diskettes in there.”

“He must have taken them with him. Have you found anything else that belongs to him?”

“Nothing.”

“Any signs that anyone else was in the house?”

“A neighbor claims a taxi came by earlier in the day. A man stepped out of it.”

“That could be important. Try to find that taxi. Make sure Forsman makes that a priority.”

“You know I have no control over what police from another district choose to do or not.”

“Then you’ll have to do this yourself. Did the neighbor give a description of the man?”

“All he said was that the man looked lightly dressed for this time of year.”

“He said that?”

“Yes, I think so.”

It’s the man from Luanda., Wallander thought. The one whose name starts with “C. ”

“This business with the taxi is very important,” Wallander repeated.

“It probably came from one of the ferry terminals, or Sturup International Airport.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Wallander told the others about their conversation.

“I think the reinforcements have arrived,” Wallander said. “Maybe even from as far away as Angola.”

“I haven’t been able to get a single answer to any of my inquiries,” Martinsson said. “I’ve been researching known sabotage and terrorist groups that focus on financial targets. But no one seems to have any data on them.”

“You think people like that would be based here in Ystad?”

Nyberg put his comb down and stared disapprovingly at Wallander, who thought that Nyberg suddenly seemed very old. Did the others see Wallander himself in this way?

“A man of Asian heritage turns up dead in a field outside Sandhammaren,” Wallander answered. “He was posing as a man from Hong Kong and we know this identity was forged. This is not the kind of thing that should happen around here. But it does. There are no truly remote parts of the world anymore. If I understand anything about the new technology it is that it enables you to be at the center of things from any geographic location.”

The phone rang again. Wallander answered again. It was Hansson. “Forsman is actually pretty good,” he said. “Things are moving right along. He’s found the taxi.”

“Where did it come from?”

“Sturup. You were right.”

“Has anyone spoken to the driver?”

“He’s right here. His shifts seem to be very long. Forsman says hello, by the way. Apparently you met at a conference last spring.”

“Then give him my regards as well,” Wallander said. “Let me talk to this driver.”

“His name is Stig Lunne. Here he is.”

Wallander gestured to the others to hand him a piece of paper and a pen.

The taxi driver spoke with such a thick Scanian dialect that it was almost impossible, even with Wallander’s extensive experience, to understand him. But at least his answers were impressively short and concise. Wallander told him who he was and what he wanted to know. He had picked his passenger up at two minutes past twelve from Sturup and the trip had not been booked in advance.

“Can you describe your passenger?”

“Tall.”

“Anything else?”

“Thin.”

“Is that all? Is there anything else you might have noticed?”

“Tan.”

“So this man was tall, thin, and suntanned?”

“Yes.”

“Did he speak Swedish?”

“No.”

“What language did he speak?”

“I don’t know. He showed me a piece of paper with the address.”

Wallander sighed. After continued questioning, he found out that the man had been wearing a light summer suit. He asked Lunne a few other routine questions, then finished. He thanked him and asked him to be in touch if he thought of anything else.

It was three o’clock. Wallander gave the others the description that Lunne had given him. Martinsson and Alfredsson had already left to go read through Modin’s notes. Now they returned.

“It’s hard to get anything out of Modin’s notes,” Alfredsson said.

“Not least because he writes things like ‘What we need to find is a coffee machine that’s right in front of our eyes.”’

“He’s talking about the process that triggers the intended event,” Wallander said. “We discussed that it was probably something very common, something most of us do every day without thinking twice about it. When the right button is pushed at the right time and place, then something is set in motion.”

“What button?” Höglund asked.

“That’s what we were trying to figure out.”

They kept talking. Shortly before four-thirty, Hansson called again. Wallander listened and made some notes. From time to time he asked a short question. The conversation took a little longer than fifteen minutes.

“Hansson has managed to dig up a friend of Elvira Lindfeldt,” Wallander said. “She had some interesting information for us. Apparently Lindfeldt worked in Pakistan for a couple of years during the ’70s.”

“I thought we were still focused on Angola,” Martinsson said.

“The important thing is what she was doing in Pakistan,” Wallander said and looked closer at the back of the envelope that he had used to make notes. “According to this friend, she was working for the World Bank. That gives us a connection. But there’s more. The friend also said that she expressed strange opinions from time to time. She was convinced that the current financial order had to be completely restructured, and that this could only be accomplished if everything was essentially torn down first.”

“That seems to settle it,” Martinsson said. “There must be a number of people involved in this, even if we still don’t know where or who they are.

“So we’re looking for a button.” Nyberg said. “Is that it? Or a lever? Or a light switch? But one that could be anywhere.”

“Yes.”

“So in other words, we know nothing.”

The room was tense. Wallander looked at his colleagues with something nearing desperation. We re not going to make it, he thought. We’re not going to find Modin in time.

The phone rang again. Wallander had lost count of the times Hansson had called them.

“Lindfeldt’s car,” he said. “We should have thought of it earlier.”

“Yes,” Wallander said, “you’re right.”

“It was normally parked on the street outside her house, but it’s gone now. We’ve alerted the district. It’s a dark-blue VW Golf with the license plate FHC 803.”

All the cars in this case seem to be dark blue, Wallander thought.

It was ten minutes to five. The feeling in the room was tired and heavy. Wallander thought they all looked defeated. No one seemed to know what to do. Martinsson got up.

“I have to have something to eat,” he said. “I’m going down to the fast-food kiosk on Osterleden. They’re open late. Does anyone want anything?”

Wallander shook his head. Martinsson made a note of what the others wanted, then he left. A few seconds later he was back.

“I don’t have any money,” he said. “Can anyone lend me some?”

Wallander had twenty crowns. Strangely enough, no one else had any cash.

“I’ll have to stop at the cash machine,” Martinsson said and left again.

Wallander stared blankly at the wall. His head was starting to hurt.

But somewhere behind the growing headache he had a thought. He didn’t know where it had come from, but suddenly he jumped. The others stared at him.

“What did Martinsson say?”

“He was going to get some food.”

“Not that. Afterward.”

“He said he had to stop by a cash machine.”

Wallander nodded slowly.

“How about that?” he asked. “Something right in front of our eyes. Is it our coffee machine?”

“I don’t think I follow,” Höglund said.

“It’s something we do without thinking twice.”

“Buying some food?”

“Sticking a card into an automatic teller machine. Getting cash and a printed receipt.”

Wallander turned to Alfredsson.

“Was there anything in Modin’s notes about a cash machine?”

Alfredsson bit his lip. He looked up at Wallander.

“You know, I actually think there was.”

Wallander stretched.

“What did he write?”

“I can’t remember exactly. It didn’t strike either me or Martinsson as important.”

Wallander slammed his fist onto the table.

“Where are his notes?”

“Martinsson took them.”

Wallander was already on his feet and on his way out the door. Alfredsson followed him to Martinsson’s office.

Modin’s crumpled notes lay on the desk beside Martinsson’s phone. Alfredsson started leafing through them while Wallander waited impatiently.

“Here it is,” Alfredsson said and handed him a piece of paper.

Wallander put on his glasses and looked it over. The paper was covered with drawings of roosters and cats. At the bottom, among some complicated and to him completely meaningless calculations there was a sentence that Modin had underlined so many times that he had ripped the paper. Suitable trigger. Could it be an ATM?

“Is that the kind of thing you were looking for?” Alfredsson asked.

But he didn’t get an answer. Wallander was already on his way back to the conference room.

Suddenly he was convinced. What better place? People were always using cash machines day in and day out at all times of day. Somewhere, at some point in time on this day, someone would make a transaction at an unknown location and thereby trigger an event that Wallander did not yet understand but had come to fear. He could not even be sure that this hadn’t in fact already taken place.

“How many ATMs are there in Ystad?” he asked the others after explaining his new idea.

No one knew.

“We can find out from the phone book,” Höglund said.

“If not, you’ll have to dig up a bank employee and find out.” Nyberg raised his hand.

“How can we be so sure that what you say is right?”

“You can’t,” Wallander said. “But it beats sitting here twiddling our thumbs.”

Nyberg didn’t back down.

“What can we do about it, anyway?”

“Even if I’m right,” Wallander said, “we don’t know which bank machine is the trigger. There may even be more than one involved. We don’t even know when or how something is going to happen. But what we can make sure of is that nothing happens.”

“So you’re thinking we could have all cash machine transactions suspended?”

“For now, yes.”

“Do you realize what that means?”

“That people will have even more reason to dislike the police. That we’ll be hearing about this for a long time. Yes, of course I do.”

“You can’t even do this without permission from the D.A.’s office. And after consultation with the bank directors.”

Wallander got up and sat down in the chair directly across from Nyberg.

“Right now I don’t give a shit about any of that. Not even if it becomes the last thing I ever do as a police officer in Ystad. Or as a police officer, period.”

Höglund had been looking through the phone book while they talked.

“There are four cash machines in Ystad,” she said. “Three downtown and one up in the department-store area. Where we found Falk.”

Wallander thought about it.

“Martinsson probably went to one of the machines downtown. They’re closer to Osterleden. Call him. You and Alfredsson will have to guard the other two. I’m going up to the one by the department stores.”

He turned to Nyberg.

“I’m going to ask you to call Chief Holgersson. Wake her up. Tell her exactly what’s going on. Then she’ll have to take it from there.”

Nyberg shook his head.

“She’ll put a stop to the whole thing.”

“Call her,” Wallander said. “But if you like you could wait until six.” Nyberg looked at him and smiled.

Wallander had one more thing to say.

“We can’t forget about Robert and this tall, thin, suntanned man. We don’t know what language he speaks. It might be Swedish, it could very well be something else. But we have to assume that he or someone else associated with him is keeping an eye on the cash machine in question. If you have the slightest suspicion or hesitation about someone, you have to call the others immediately.”

“I’ve staked out many things in my day,” Alfredsson said. “I don’t think I’ve ever staked out a cash machine.”

“Sometime has to be the first. Do you have a gun?”

Alfredsson shook his head.

“Get him one,” Wallander said to Höglund. “And now let’s get going.”

It was nine minutes past five when Wallander left the station. He drove up to the department-store area with mixed feelings. Most likely he was completely wrong about this, but they had gotten as far as they could back there in the conference room. Wallander parked outside the Tax Authority building. The area was dark and deserted. Dawn was still some time away. He zipped his jacket and looked around. Then he walked over to the cash machine. There was no reason to remain concealed. The radio he had brought along made a noise. Höglund was broadcasting that they were all in place. Alfredsson had immediately run into problems. Some drunk young people had insisted they be allowed to make a withdrawal. He had called in for a patrol car to help him out.

“Let the car circulate between us,” Wallander said. “It will only get worse in an hour or so when people start waking up.”

“Martinsson took out some cash,” she said. “But nothing happened.”

“We don’t know that,” Wallander said. “Whatever happens, we’re not going to see it.”

The radio fell silent. Wallander looked at a knocked-over shopping cart in the parking lot. Apart from a small pickup truck, the lot was empty. It was twenty-seven minutes past five. Up on the highway, a large truck rattled past on its way to Malmö. Wallander started thinking about Elvira but decided he didn’t have the energy. He would have to come back to it, figuring out how he could have let himself be taken in like that. How he could have been such a fool. Wallander turned his back to the wind and stamped his feet. He heard a car approaching. It was a sedan painted with the logo of a local electrical firm. The man who jumped out was tall and thin. Wallander flinched and grabbed his gun, but then he relaxed. He recognized the man as an electrician who had once done some work for his father out in Löderup. The man nodded.

“Is it broken?” he asked.

“We’re not letting anyone make any withdrawals right now.”

“I’ll have to go across town, then.”

“Unfortunately that won’t be possible, either.”

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s only a temporary malfunction.”

“And they called in the police for that?”

Wallander didn’t answer. The man got back into his car and drove away. Wallander knew he would be able to keep warding people off with the explanation of a temporary malfunction, but he was already dreading the moment when it got out into the public. How had he thought it would work? Lisa Holgersson would put a stop to it the moment she found out. Their reasons were still mere speculation. He would not be able to do anything, and Martinsson would have more grist for his mill.

Then he caught sight of a man walking across the parking lot. It was a young man. He had emerged from behind the pickup truck, and he came walking toward Wallander. It took a few seconds for him to realize who it was. Robert Modin. Wallander was frozen to the spot. He held his breath. He did not understand. Suddenly Modin stopped and turned his back to Wallander, who sensed instinctively what was about to happen. He threw himself to the side. The man behind him had come from the direction of the department stores. He was tall, thin, and suntanned and he was carrying a gun. He was ten meters away and there was nowhere for Wallander to run. Wallander closed his eyes. The feeling from the field returned. The bitter end. Here but no longer. He waited for the shot that didn’t come. Slowly he opened his eyes. The man had the gun pointed directly at him, but he was looking down at his watch. The time, Wallander thought. It’s time. I was right. I still don’t know what is going to happen but I was right.

The man gestured for Wallander to come closer and to put his arms in the air. He pulled out Wallander’s gun and threw it into a garbage can next to the cash machine. Then he held out a plastic card in his left hand and said some numbers in broken Swedish.

“One, five, five, one.”

He dropped the card on the pavement and pointed at it with his gun. Wallander picked it up. The man took a few steps to the side and looked down at his watch. Then he pointed to the bank machine. His movements were more violent now. For the first time the man looked nervous. Wallander walked up to the machine. When he turned slightly he could see Modin still standing in the spot where he had stopped. Right now Wallander didn’t care what would happen when he put the card in and entered the numbers. Modin was alive. That was all that was important. But how could he continue to protect him? Wallander was searching for a way out. If he tried to attack the man behind him he would immediately be shot. Modin would probably not have time to run away. Wallander fed the card into the machine. At the same time a shot rang out. A bullet hit the ground nearby and whined away. The man spun around. Wallander turned and saw Martinsson about thirty meters away on the other side of the street. As the man aimed at Martinsson, Wallander leaped at the garbage can and pulled his gun out of the trash. The man shot at Martinsson but missed. As he turned back around, Wallander shot him in the chest and he collapsed.

“What’s happening?” Martinsson yelled.

“It’s safe to come over,” Wallander yelled back.

The man on the pavement was dead.

“What made you come here?” Wallander asked Martinsson.

“If your hypothesis was right, it had to be here,” Martinsson answered. “It makes sense that Falk would have chosen the bank machine closest to his house and that he always went past on his evening walks. I asked Nyberg to keep an eye on the cash machine downtown where I was.”

Martinsson pointed at the dead man.

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know. But I think his name starts with the letter ‘C.’”

“Is everything over now?”

“Maybe. I think so. But I don’t even know what it is that’s over.”

Wallander should have thanked Martinsson, but he didn’t say anything. Instead he walked over to Modin, who was still standing in the same spot. There would be time enough for him and Martinsson to talk later.

Robert Modin’s eyes were filled with tears.

“He told me to walk over to you. He said otherwise he would kill my mother and father.”

“We’ll talk about all that later,” Wallander said. “How are you feeling?”

“He told me to say I had to stay and finish my work in Malmö. Then he shot her. And we left. I was in the trunk and could hardly breathe. But we were right.”

“Yes,” Wallander said. “We were right.”

“Did you find my notes?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t start taking it seriously until much later. A cash machine. A place where people come to take out their money.”

“You should have said something,” Wallander said. “But maybe I should have thought of it myself. We knew it had something to do with money, after all. It should have been an obvious choice to hide something like that.”

“An ATM as the launching pad for their virus-bomb,” Modin said. “It has a certain finesse, don’t you think?”

Wallander looked at the boy by his side. How much longer could he handle the strain? Suddenly he was hit by the feeling of having stood like this before with a young boy at his side. Then he realized he was thinking of Stefan Fredman. The young boy who was now dead and buried.

“What was it that happened?” Wallander asked. “Do you think you can tell me?”

Modin nodded.

“He was already there when she let me in. And he threatened me. They locked me in the bathroom. Then I heard him start screaming at her. I could understand him since he was speaking English. At least the parts I could hear.”

“What did he say?”

“That she hadn’t done her job. That she had shown weakness.”

“Did you hear anything else?”

“Only the shots. When he came to unlock the bathroom door I thought he was going to kill me as well. He had the gun in his hand. But he said I was his hostage and that I had to do as he said. Otherwise he would kill my parents.”

Modin’s voice started to wobble.

“We’ll talk about the rest later,” Wallander said. “That’s enough. That’s plenty, in fact.”

“He said they were going to knock out the global financial system. It was going to start here, at this cash machine.”

“I know,” Wallander said. “But we’ll talk about that later. You need to sleep. You have to go home to your parents now. Then we’ll talk.”

They heard sirens approaching. Now Wallander could see a dark blue Volkswagen Golf parked behind the pickup. It had been impossible to see from where he was standing.

Wallander felt how exhausted he was. And how relieved. Martinsson came walking over.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“I know,” Wallander said. “But not now.”

It was nine minutes to six on the Monday, the twentieth of October. Wallander wondered absently what the rest of the winter was going to be like.

Chapter Forty

On Tuesday, the eleventh of November, all charges against Wallander in the Eva Persson assault case were dismissed. Höglund was the one who told him the news. She had also played a central role in the direction the investigation had taken, but he only found that out later.

A few days before, Höglund had paid a visit to Eva Persson and her mother. No one knew exactly what was said during that visit; there had been no transcription of the conversation and no third party present, although these had been court-ordered. Höglund did tell Wallander that she applied “a mild form of emotional blackmail.” What that entailed she never told him, but in time Wallander was able to put together a clearer picture. He assumed that she had told Eva Persson to turn her thoughts to the future. Even if she was now cleared in the murder of Lundberg, bringing false charges against a policeman could have unpleasant consequences. The following day Eva Persson and her mother withdrew the charges against Wallander. They acknowledged that Wallander’s version of the events had been correct, and that Eva Persson had tried to hit her mother. Wallander could still have been held accountable for his actions in the situation, but the whole matter was hastily dropped, much to everyone’s relief.

Höglund had also seen to it that a number of journalists were informed of the dropped charges, but the news never made it into the paper.

This particular Tuesday was an unusually cold fall day in Scania, with gusty northerly winds that occasionally neared storm strength. Wallander had woken up early after an unsettled night. He could not recall his dreams in any detail, but they had involved being hunted and almost choked to death by shadowy figures and objects bearing down on him.

When he arrived at the station around eight o’clock, he decided he would only stay for a short while. The day before he had decided he would finally get to the bottom of a question that had been troubling him for a long time. After casting his eye over a few forms and making sure that the photo album Marianne Falk had lent to the police had been returned to her, he left the station and drove to the Hökbergs’ house. He had spoken to Erik Hökberg the day before and arranged a meeting. Sonja’s brother Emil was at school, and Erik’s wife was on one of her frequent trips to see her sister in Höör. Erik Hökberg looked pale, and as if he had lost weight. According to a rumor that had reached Wallander, Sonja Hökberg’s funeral had been an intensely emotional affair. Wallander stepped into the house and assured Erik that his business would not take long.

“You said you wanted to see Sonja’s room,” Erik said. “But you never said why it was so important.”

“I’ll explain it to you when we get up there. Why don’t you come with me?”

“Nothing has been changed in there. We don’t have the energy. Not yet.”

They walked upstairs and into the pink room where Wallander had once immediately sensed that something was off.

“I don’t think this room has always looked the way it does now,” he said. “At some point Sonja redecorated her room, didn’t she?”

Erik Hökberg looked baffled.

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t know. I’m asking you.”

Erik swallowed. Wallander waited patiently.

“It was after that time,” Erik said. “The rape, I mean. Suddenly she took everything down from the walls and got out all of her old things from when she was a little girl. Things that had been stored in boxes in the attic for years. We never understood why she did it, and she never said anything about it.”

Something was taken from her, Wallander thought. And she tried to run away from it in two ways: by running back to a childhood where everything was still all right, and by planning a revenge by proxy.

“That was all I wanted to know,” Wallander said.

“Why is it so important to you now? Nothing matters anymore. It won’t bring Sonja back. Ruth and Emil and I are living half a life, if that.”

“Sometimes one feels a need to get to the bottom of things,” Wallander said apologetically. “Unanswered questions can hang on and on. But you’re right, of course. It doesn’t change anything.”

They left the room and went back downstairs. Erik Hökberg asked if he wanted a cup of coffee, but Wallander declined. He wanted to leave this depressing place as soon as possible.

He drove downtown, parked on Hamngatan, and walked up to the bookstore that had just opened for the day. He was finally picking up the book on refinishing furniture that he had ordered for Linda. He was shocked at the price. He had them gift-wrap it and took it back to the car. Linda was coming to see him the following day and he would give her the book then.

He was back in his office by nine. At nine-thirty he gathered up his folders and went to one of the conference rooms. Today they were having a final meeting to discuss the Tynnes Falk case before handing the documents over to the prosecutor. Since the murder of Elvira Lindfeldt had involved the Malmö police, Inspector Forsman was also present at the meeting.

At the meeting Wallander had not yet heard about the dropped charges against him, but this was not anything that weighed heavily on his mind. The most important thing was still the fact that Robert Modin had survived. This helped him even when he was overwhelmed by thoughts that he might have been able to prevent Jonas Landahl’s death if he had been able to think just a little further ahead. Part of him knew that this self-accusation was unreasonable, but these thoughts came and went, regardless.

For once, Wallander was the last to enter the conference room. He said hello to Forsman and did in fact remember his face from the police conference they had both attended. Only two people were absent: Hans Alfredsson had returned to Stockholm and Nyberg was sick with the flu. Wallander sat down, and they started reviewing the case material. They had so much to cover that the meeting ran on until one o’clock, but at that point they could finally close the books on it.

Wallander’s memories of the case had started losing clarity in the three weeks that had gone by since the shooting incident by the cash machine. But the facts that they had uncovered since then strongly supported their initial conlusions.

The dead man’s name was Carter, and he came from Luanda. They had pieced together an identity and history for him now, and Wallander thought he had finally been able to answer the question he had asked himself so many times during the investigation: What had happened in Angola? Now he knew at least the bare bones of the answer. Falk and Carter had met in Luanda during the 1970s, probably by accident. Exactly what that first meeting had been like or what had been said was impossible to reconstruct, but the two men had clearly had a great deal in common. They had shared many traits in which pride, a taste for revenge, and a confused sense of being among the chosen few had predominated. Together they had started laying the plans for an attack on the global financial system. They were going to fire their electronic missile when the time was right. Carter’s extensive familiarity with the structures of financial organizations, coupled with Falk’s innovative technological knowledge of the electronic world that connected those institutions, had been a powerful and potentially lethal combination.

Together they had built up a secretive and strongly controlled organization that came to include such disparate individuals as Fu Cheng, Elvira Landfeldt, and Jonas Landahl. They had been pulled in, indoctrinated, and forever ensnared. The picture that had emerged was of a highly hierarchical organization in which Carter and Falk made all the decisions. Even if the evidence was as yet insubstantial, there were indications that Carter had personally executed more than one unsatisfactory member of the group.

To Wallander, Carter seemed like the archetypal crazed and ruthless sectarian leader, driven by cold calculation. His impression of Falk remained more complicated, since he had never been convinced that Falk shared the same capacity for ruthlessness. But Falk did appear to have had a carefully guarded but deep-seated need for affirmation. During the 1960s he had swung from the extreme right to the radical left. Finally he had broken with conventional politics entirely and embarked on his demonic plottings against the human race.

The police in Hong Kong had been able to establish the true identity of Fu Cheng. His real name had been Hua Gang. Interpol had identified his fingerprints at the scene of several crimes, including bank robberies in Frankfurt and Marseilles. Though he couldn’t prove it, Wallander suspected that this money had been used to finance parts of Falk’s and Carter’s operations. Hua Gang had been involved in organized crime for a long time and had figured as a suspect in several murder cases, both in Europe and Asia, without ever being convicted. There was no doubt that he had been the killer of both Sonja Hökberg and Jonas Landahl. Fingerprints and reports from several witnesses confirmed this. But Hua Gang had been working under the direction of Carter, and perhaps of Falk. There was still work to be done in mapping the entire workings and reach of the organization, but the information they already had suggested that there was no longer a reason to fear the group. With Carter and Falk dead, the organization had essentially ceased to exist.

Wallander was never able to determine exactly why Carter had shot Elvira Lindfeldt. Modin had reported as much as he could about the angry accusations Carter had flung at her before she died. Wallander assumed she had simply known too much and become a liability. Carter must have been in a state of near desperation when he reached Sweden.

Still, he had come uncomfortably close to succeeding. If either Wallander or Modin had put the bank card into the machine at exactly five thirty-one that Monday, the twentieth of October, they would have unleashed an electronic avalanche. The experts who had been tracing the infiltrations that Falk had made into the bank networks had been amazed. Falk and Carter had managed to render the major financial institutions of the world shockingly vulnerable to attack. Right now, security experts around the world were working around the clock to rectify these deficiencies, while yet other groups were trying to construct an accurate picture of what would have happened had the plan actually been set in motion.

Luckily, of course, neither Modin nor Wallander had entered Carter’s password into the machine. And nothing had happened, other than that a selection of cash machines in Scania had gone haywire that day. Many of them had been shut down, but as yet no problem had been located. Eventually they had resumed working normally just as mysteriously.

They never did manage to find a satisfying answer to why Sonja Hökberg was thrown against the high voltage wires at the power substation, nor why Falk had been in possession of the blueprint. They had, however, managed to find out how the perpetrators had gained access to the station. That had been thanks to Hansson’s doggedness. It turned out that one of the technicians, Moberg, had come home from a vacation to find that his house had been broken into. The keys to the station had still been there, but Hansson maintained that whoever committed the burglary must have made an imprint and then had copies made by bribing the American manufacturer. Simple fact-checking had revealed an entry visa in Jonas Landahl’s passport proving that he had been in the United States in the month following the break-in at Moberg’s house. The money may have come from Hua Gang’s bank robberies in Frankfurt and Marseilles.

Some loose ends were painstakingly tied up; others remained unsolved. They found out that Tynnes Falk had kept a post-office box in Malmö — but they could never figure out why he had told Siv Eriksson that he had his mail sent to her address. His journal was never recovered, nor were the fingers that had been severed from his hand. The coroner’s office did, however, finally determine that he had died from natural causes. Enander had been right about one thing: it was not a heart attack. Falk’s death was the result of a burst blood vessel in his brain.

Other information slowly trickled in. One day Wallander found a long report on his desk from Nyberg in which he described how they had determined that the empty suitcase found in Jonas Landahl’s cabin on the ferry had belonged to him. Nyberg had not determined exactly what had happened to the contents but assumed that Hua Gang had thrown them overboard in an effort to delay the identification of the body. They only ever recovered his passport. Wallander put the report aside with a sigh.

The most important task had been the mapping of Carter’s and Falk’s strange world. Wallander knew now that their ambitions had known no bounds. After their intended crippling of the world financial markets, they’d had plans to strangle important utilities worldwide. They had been motivated in no small part by their own vanity and an intoxication with their sense of power. Wallander thought that it was this weakness that had tempted Carter to have the electrical relay brought to the morgue and to have Falk’s fingers cut off. There had been religious overtones in their macabre world, and Carter and Falk had figured as not only as overseers but as deities.

Although Carter and Falk had lived in the idiosyncratic realm of their own deranged fantasies, Wallander had started to sense that at least their plan had cast attention on an important insight: the incredible vulnerability of modern society.

Sometimes he thought about it for a long time late at night. During the past thirty years, a society had been emerging that he did not fully recognize. In his work he was constantly confronted with the results of brutal forces that ruthlessly flung people to the outer margins. The walls surrounding these outcasts were dauntingly high: drugs, unemployment, social indifference.

These changes were accompanied by a parallel development in which members of society were being connected ever more tightly by new technological innovations. But this highly efficient electronic network came at the cost of increased vulnerability to sabotage and terror.

At the heart of his thinking on these changes was his heightened sense of his own vulnerability. He knew he was in danger of being mowed down by Martinsson. He also felt intimidated by the constantly changing conditions of the workplace and the new demands that were being made. In the future, society would need a new kind of policeman. Not that his kind of experience and knowledge were no longer valuable, but now there were whole domains of knowledge he knew nothing about. He was forced to accept the fact that he had simply become old. An old dog who could no longer be taught new tricks.

During those long nights in his apartment, he often thought he no longer had the energy for policework. But he knew he had no choice but to continue, at least for another ten years. There were no real alternatives open to him anymore. He was an investigative police of ficer, a homicide detective. Traveling around to schools to lecture about the dangers of drugs or drunken driving was not a viable option for him. That would never be his world.

The meeting ended at one o’clock and the material was handed over to the district attorney’s office. No one would be charged, since all of the suspects were already dead. But the D.A. already had a report on his desk that could very well lead to an indictment of Carl-Einar Lundberg.

It was after the meeting was over that Höglund came by his office to tell him that Eva Persson and her mother had recanted their story regarding the slap. Naturally Wallander was relieved, but he was not particularly surprised. Although he had his share of doubts about the ability of justice to prevail in the Swedish judicial system, he had always expected that the truth in this particular case would eventually come out.

They sat and talked for a while about the possibility that he could now counter the accusations. Hölgund urged him to make an example of his mistreatment for the sake of the whole force, but Wallander was reluctant. He thought the best thing would be for the whole affair to be buried in silence.

Once Höglund had left, Wallander sat in his chair staring into space for a long time. His head was empty. Finally he got up to get a cup of coffee.

In the doorway to the lunchroom he bumped into Martinsson. During the past few weeks Wallander had felt a strange and, for him, an unfamiliar ambivalence. Normally he did not shy away from conflicts, but what had happened between him and Martinsson was more difficult and went deeper. There were elements of lost friendship, betrayal, camaraderie. But now he knew the moment had come. He couldn’t put it off any longer.

“We should talk,” he said. “Do you have a minute?”

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

They went back to the conference room, where they had spent the whole morning. Wallander got straight to the point.

“I know you’ve been going behind my back. I know you’ve been spreading lies about me. You questioned my ability to lead this investigation. Why you’ve done all this in secret instead of coming to me directly, only you can say. The only way I can explain your behavior is that you’re laying the groundwork for your future career, and that you’re willing to do anything to get where you want to go.”

Martinsson was calm when he spoke. Wallander noticed that his words seemed well rehearsed.

“I can only tell you how it is. You’ve lost your grip. I think the only thing I’m guilty of is that I didn’t say this earlier.”

“Why didn’t you tell me directly?”

“I tried to, but you don’t listen.”

“I do listen.”

“You think you do, but that’s not the same thing as really listening.”

“Why did you tell Lisa that I had ordered you not to follow me into the field that time?”

“She must have misunderstood what I said.”

Wallander looked at Martinsson. The urge to hit him in the face was still there, but he knew he wouldn’t do anything like that. He didn’t have the energy for it. He wasn’t going to be able to shake Martinsson. He seemed to believe his own lies. At the very least, he would not be able to get him to change his official line.

“Was there anything else you wanted to talk about?”

“No,” Wallander said. “I don’t have anything else to say.”

Martinsson got up and left.

Wallander felt as if the walls had come tumbling down around him. Martinsson had made his choice and their friendship was gone, broken off. Wallander wondered with growing despondence if it had ever really been there in the first place. Or had Martinsson always been waiting for his opportunity to strike?

Waves of grief washed over him. And then there came a wave of rage.

He was not going to give up. For the next few years at least, he would remain in charge of the most complicated investigations in Ystad.

But the feeling of having lost something was stronger than this rage. He asked himself again how he would have the energy to carry on.

Wallander left the station directly after his conversation with Martinsson. He left his cell phone in his office and didn’t tell Irene any thing about where he was going or when he would be back. He got in his car and took the highway to Malmö. When he approached the exit for Stjarnsund, he decided to take it. He didn’t know why. Perhaps the thought of two broken friendships was too much to bear.

Wallander’s thoughts often returned to Elvira. She had entered his life under false pretenses, and in the final analysis he suspected she would even have been prepared to kill him. But he could not stop himself from thinking about her the way he had actually experienced her. A woman who sat across from him at the dinner table and listened to what he had to say. A woman with beautiful legs who had dispelled his loneliness for a short time.

When he turned into Sten Widén’s ranch, he saw that it looked deserted. Widen had posted a FOR SALE sign some time ago, but now there was an additional sign announcing that the ranch was sold. The house was empty. Wallander walked over to the stables. The horses were all gone. A lone cat sat in a pile of hay and looked at him suspiciously.

Wallander found it upsetting. Sten Widen had already left, and he hadn’t even bothered to say good-bye.

Wallander left the stables and drove away as fast as he could.

The following day he did not go into the office at all. He drove around on the small roads outside Ystad all afternoon. A couple of times he stepped out of his car and stared out over the barren fields. When it started getting dark, he headed back. He stopped at the grocer’s on the way and paid his bill. That evening, he listened to the entire score of Verdi’s La Traviata twice in a row. He also spoke to Gertrud over the phone, and they arranged that he would stop by in the morning.

The phone rang shortly before midnight. Wallander fumed. Oh, God, not again, he thought. Don’t let anything have happened. Not now, not yet. None of us can handle it.

It was Baiba calling from Riga. It had been about a year since they had spoken last.

“I just wanted to know how you were doing,” she said.

“Fine. How about you?”

“Fine.”

The silence bounced from Ystad to Riga and back again.

“Do you ever think about me?” he asked.

“Of course. Why would I have called otherwise?”

“I was just wondering.”

“And you?”

“I always think about you.”

Wallander knew she would see through him. He was lying, or at least exaggerating. He didn’t know exactly why. Baiba was something that was over, that was fading. But he still could not completely let go of the thought of her, or of the memories of their time together.

They exchanged some casual remarks on other topics, and then the conversation ended. Wallander put the phone down slowly.

Did he miss her? He didn’t know. It was as if firewalls were not a phenomenon relegated to the world of computers. He had a firewall inside himself, and he didn’t always know how to get past it.

The next day, Wednesday, the twelfth of November, the gusty winds had died down. Wallander woke up early even though he had the day off. He couldn’t remember the last time he had had a day off in the middle of the week. He had decided to use some of his comp time, since Linda was coming to visit. He was going to meet her plane at one o’clock at Sturup Airport. He would use the morning to trade in his car and visit Gertrud.

At eight o’clock he got out of bed. He drank his coffee and read the paper. He cleaned the apartment, changed the sheets in Linda’s old room, and put the vacuum cleaner away. The sun was shining, and that cheered him up. He drove out to the car dealership, which was located on Industrigatan. He chose another Peugeot, this time a 306 from 1996. It had few miles on it, and the car dealer, Tyrén, gave him a good price on his old car. Wallander was done at ten-thirty. It always gave him a good feeling to get a new car, as if he had scrubbed himself clean.

He continued on to the house in Svarte where Gertrud lived with her sister. He had a cup of coffee and listened somewhat absentmindedly to their chatter.

He left their house at a quarter to twelve. When he got to Sturup there was still a half-hour left.

As usual he felt nervous about seeing Linda again. He wondered if it was always the case that parents eventually became afraid of their own children. He sat down in the airport café and had another cup of coffee. Suddenly he noticed Höglund’s ex-husband sitting a few tables away. Wallander assumed he was leaving on another business trip. A woman that Wallander didn’t recognize was with him. Wallander felt hurt on Höglund’s behalf. He moved to another table and sat with his back to the man so he wouldn’t be recognized. He wondered why he was reacting so strongly but found no answer.

The plane landed on time. Linda was one of the last people to get off the plane. When they saw each other, Wallander’s nervousness disappeared. She was just as open and cheerful as before. Her easygoing nature was the direct opposite of his own. She was also not as outrageously dressed as she had been on some previous occasions. They picked up her suitcase at the baggage claim, and then Wallander showed her to the new car. He wasn’t sure that she would have noticed the difference if he hadn’t said anything.

They drove toward Ystad.

“How are things?” he asked. “What are you doing these days? You’ve been a bit secretive this past while.”

“It’s such a nice day,” she said. “Can’t we drive down to the beach?”

“I asked you a question.”

“You’ll get an answer.”

“When?”

“Not just yet.”

Wallander took the next exit and drove down to Mossby Beach. The parking lot was deserted, the fast-food kiosk closed for the year. She opened her suitcase and took out a thick sweater, and they walked down toward the water.

“I remember coming here when I was little,” she said. “It’s one of my earliest memories.”

“Often it was just you and me. When Mona needed time to herself.”

There was a ship far out at sea on the horizon. The sea was very calm.

“What about that picture in the paper?” she asked suddenly.

Wallander felt his stomach tighten up.

“It’s over now,” he said. “The girl and her mother recanted. It’s over.

“I saw another picture,” she said. “In a magazine. Something happened outside a church in Malmö. I think it said you threatened a photographer.”

Wallander thought back to Stefan Fredman’s funeral and the film he had pulled out of the camera. The photographer must have had an extra roll. He told her about the incident.

“You did the right thing,” she said. “I hope I would have done the same thing.”

“Luckily you’re not going to find yourself in these situations,” Wallander said. “You’re not a police officer.”

“Not yet.”

Wallander stopped short and looked at her.

“What did you say?”

She kept walking and didn’t answer immediately. Some seagulls flew over their heads, screeching.

“You think I’ve been secretive,” she said. “And you want to know what I’ve been up to. I didn’t want to tell you about it until I had made up my mind.”

“Do you mean what you just said?”

“I want to be a police officer. I’ve already applied to the police academy, and I think I’m going to get in.”

Wallander still couldn’t believe it.

“Is this true?”

“Yes.”

“But you’ve never talked about it before.”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I didn’t want to.”

“But I thought you were going to go into the antique business and refinish old furniture.”

“I thought so, too — for a while. But now I know what I really want to do. And that’s why I came down here — to tell you. Ask you what you think. Get your blessing.”

They started walking again.

“This comes right out of the blue,” Wallander said.

“You’ve talked about what it was like when you told Grandfather that you were going to be a policeman. If I remember correctly, his answer came pretty quickly.”

“He said no before I had finished talking.”

“And what do you say?”

“Give me a minute and I’ll let you know.”

She went and sat down on an old tree trunk that was half-buried in the sand. Wallander walked down to the water. He had never imagined that Linda would want to follow in his footsteps. It was still hard for him to sort out what he had heard.

He looked out over the ocean. The sunlight reflected on the water.

Linda shouted out to him that his minute was up. He walked back.

“I think it’s a good thing,” he said. “I think you’ll be the kind of police officer we’re going to need in the future.”

“Do you mean it?”

“Every word.”

“I was nervous about telling you. I was worried about how you’d react.”

“You didn’t have to worry.”

She got up from the log.

“We have a lot to talk about,” she said. “And I’m also hungry.”

They returned to the car and continued to Ystad. Wallander tried to digest the news as he drove. He didn’t doubt that Linda would make a good policewoman. But did she realize what was in store for her? The fatigue, and the burnout?

But he also felt something else. Her decision somehow justified the one he had made so long ago in life.

This feeling was buried underneath the others. But it was there, and it was strong.

They sat up talking for a long time that evening. Wallander told her about the extremely challenging case that had started and ended by the same nondescript cash machine.

“Everyone talks about power,” she said when Wallander had finished. “But no one really questions institutions like the World Bank, or the enormous power they wield. How much human suffering have they caused?”

“You mean to say you’re sympathetic to Carter and Falk and their cause?”

“No,” she said. “At least not to the way they chose to fight back.”

Wallander became more and more convinced that her decision was the result of a long process. This was not an impulse decision that she would come to regret.

“I’m sure I’m going to need to ask you for advice,” she said just before going to bed.

“Don’t be so sure I have any good advice to give.”

Wallander stayed up for a while after she had gone to bed. It was half past two in the morning. He had a glass of wine in his hand and had put on one of Puccini’s operas. The volume was low.

Wallander shut his eyes. In his mind he saw a burning wall in front of him. He readied himself.

Then he ran straight through the wall. He only singed his hair and skin.

He opened his eyes again and smiled.

Something was behind him.

Something else was only just beginning.

The following day, on Thursday, the thirteenth of November, the stock markets in Asia unexpectedly started to fall sharply.

Many explanations were offered, most of them contradictory.

But no one ever managed to answer the most important question: What was it that had set the process in motion?