Firewall (12 page)

"No more unlikely than anything else," Wallander said. "So let's try to establish whether they had had any earlier contact with Lundberg."

Höglund got up and left. Wallander reached for his pad and tried to jot down the outline of what Höglund had said. By 1 p.m., he felt as if he were no further forward. He was hungry and walked out to the canteen to see if there were any sandwiches left. They were all gone. He picked up his coat from his office and left the station. This time he remembered to take his mobile and to instruct Irene to refer calls from American Express to that number. He went to the café closest to the station. He could tell that some of the customers there recognised him. He felt sure that the picture in the papers had been a topic of discussion in most Ystad homes. He felt self-conscious and ate in a hurry. When he was back on the street his phone rang. It was Anita.

"We've found the information," she said. "That card number belongs to someone called Fu Cheng."

Wallander stopped, took a scrap of paper from his pocket and wrote it down.

"It's a Hong Kong-based account," she said. "There's only one problem. It's a false account."

"He stole it?"

"Worse than that. The account is fictitious. American Express has never opened an account with a Fu Cheng."

"What does that mean?"

"Well, it's good that we discovered it so quickly. The restaurant will not, unfortunately, get paid. Hopefully the owner is insured against fraud."

"Does that mean Fu Cheng doesn't exist?"

"Oh, I'm sure he exists, but he has a fake credit card, as well as a fake address."

Wallander thanked her and hung up. A man who possibly came from Hong Kong had turned up at István's restaurant in Ystad and paid with a fake credit card. At some point he had made eye contact with Sonja Hökberg.

He hurried back to the station. He could no longer put off the next task: preparing the lecture he had undertaken to give. Even though he had decided to speak plainly about the murder investigation he was involved in, he still needed to write down the points he wanted to make. Otherwise his nervousness would get the better of him.

He started writing but had trouble concentrating. The image of Hökberg's charred body kept returning. He reached for the phone and called Martinsson.

"See if you can find anything on Persson's father," he said. "Name of Hugo Lövström. He's supposed to be in Växjö. An alcoholic and a vagrant, apparently."

"I'll do that through our colleagues in Växjö," Martinsson said. "I'm also checking out Lundberg."

"Did you think of that on your own?" Wallander was surprised.

"Höglund asked me. She's just gone to check out Persson's home. I don't know what she expects to find."

"One more name for your computers," Wallander said. "Fu Cheng."

"What was that?"

Wallander spelled it.

"Who is this?"

"I'll explain later. Can we have a meeting this afternoon? I suggest 4.30 p.m. It'll be short."

"His name is Fu Cheng? Is that all?" Martinsson said.

Wallander didn't bother to reply. He set about the plan of his lecture. After only a short while, he already hated what he had written. The year before, he had given a lecture about his experiences as a crime fighter at Police Training College. In his opinion it had been a complete disaster, but many students had come up to him afterwards to thank him. He never knew what they were thanking him for.

At 4.30 p.m. he gave up. Now it was in the lap of the gods. He picked up his notes and headed for the conference room. No-one was there yet. He tried to gather his thoughts and come up with a clear summary of the events of the case so far, but he was distracted.

It doesn't hang together, he thought. Lundberg's murder doesn't fit with these two girls. Nor does Hökberg's murder. This investigation lacks a common foundation, even though we know what happened. What we don't have is the crucial "why".

Hansson arrived with Martinsson in tow, Höglund behind them. Wallander was glad that Holgersson didn't come. It was a short meeting.

Höglund told them about her visit to Persson's home. "Everything seemed very normal," she said. "It's a flat on Stödgatan. Her mother works as a cook at the hospital. The girl's room was what you'd expect."

"Did she have any posters on the wall?" Wallander said.

"Only pop stars I didn't recognise," Höglund said. "But nothing out of the ordinary. Why do you ask?"

Wallander didn't elaborate.

The transcript of Höglund's conversation with Persson was ready and Höglund distributed copies. Wallander told them of his visit to István's restaurant and the subsequent revelation of the fake credit card.

"We need to find this man," he said. "If for no other reason than to be able to rule out any involvement on his part with this case."

They continued to sift through the day's work. Martinsson told them what he had done, then Hansson. Hansson had talked to Kalle Ryss, whom Persson had called Hökberg's boyfriend. He had only said that he knew very little about her.

"He said she was very secretive," Hansson said. "Whatever that means."

After 20 minutes, Wallander tried to sum up. He stressed the fact that they had more work ahead of them than they had at this stage expected.

The meeting was over shortly before 5 p.m. Höglund wished him good luck.

"They're going to accuse me of being a violent misogynist," Wallander said.

"I don't think so. You have a good reputation."

"I thought it was destroyed a long time ago."

Wallander went home. There was a letter from Per Åkeson in the Sudan. He put it on the kitchen table to be opened later. Then he showered and put on a clean shirt and a suit. He left the flat at 6.30 p.m. and walked to the place where he was supposed to meet all these unknown women. He stood for a moment staring up at the lighted house before he found the courage to go in.

It was past nine when he re-emerged from the house. He was running with sweat. He had talked longer than he had planned, and there had been more questions than he could have expected. But the women there had inspired him. Most of them were his own age and their attention had flattered him. When he left, part of him had even wanted to stay longer.

He walked slowly home. He could hardly remember what he had talked about, but they had listened. That had been the most important thing.

There was one woman in particular who stood out in his mind. He had exchanged a few words with her before he left. She had said her name was Solveig Gabrielsson. She had made a real impression on him. When he got home he wrote down her name. He didn't know why.

The phone rang. He answered it before even taking his coat off.

It was Martinsson. "How did the lecture go?" he said.

"Good, I think. But that can't be why you're calling."

"I'm just here working," Martinsson said slowly. "There's been a phone call from the coroner's office in Lund that I don't quite know what to do with."

Wallander caught his breath.

"Do you remember Tynnes Falk?" Martinsson said.

"The man by the cash machine. Yes, of course."

"Well, it seems his body has disappeared."

Wallander frowned. "I thought bodies disappeared only into coffins."

"One would think so, but in this case it appears that someone has actually made off with the corpse."

Wallander didn't know what to ask next. He tried to think.

"And one other thing," Martinsson said. "It's not just that the body has gone missing. Something was left in its place on the stretcher in the morgue."

"What was that?"

"A broken relay."

Wallander wasn't exactly sure what a relay was, other than that it had something to do with electricity.

"It's not just an ordinary relay," Martinsson said. "This one is large."

Wallander's heart was beating faster. He sensed what was coming. "And where does one normally find large relays?" he asked.

"In power substations, like where Hökberg's body was found."

Wallander was silent. They had a connection. But not the kind he had been expecting.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Martinsson was waiting in the canteen.

It was 10 p.m. on Thursday. The faint sound of a radio came from the control room that handled incoming emergency calls. Otherwise all was quiet. Martinsson was drinking tea and eating rusks. Wallander sat across from him without taking off his coat.

"How did your lecture go?"

"You've already asked me that."

"I used to enjoy public speaking, but I don't know if I'd be any good at it any more."

"I'm sure you'd still be better at it than me. But since you ask, I had 19 middle-aged women listening to bloodthirsty stories about our socially responsible profession with baited breath. They were very nice and asked me polite and friendly questions that I answered in a manner which even the national chief of police would not have been able to fault. Does that give you the picture?"

Martinsson nodded and brushed the crumbs from his mouth before pulling out his notes.

"I'll take it from the top. At 8.51 p.m. the officer in charge in the control room puts a call through to me since he knows it doesn't involve sending out patrol cars. If I hadn't been here the caller would probably have been told to call back tomorrow morning. The caller's name was Pålsson. Sture Pålsson. I don't know what his position is, but he's in the coroner's office in Lund. Anyway, at around 8 p.m. he checked the morgue and noticed that one of the lockers – do they call them lockers? – wasn't shut properly, and when he pulled the gurney out, the body was gone and an electrical relay was lying in its place. He called home to the janitor who had been working there that day. Name of Lyth. He was able to confirm that the body had been there at 6 p.m. when he left for the day. The body disappeared sometime between 6 and 8 p.m. On one side of the morgue, there's a back entrance that opens onto the yard. Pålsson checked the door and discovered that the lock had been broken. He called the Malmö police. The whole thing went very fast. A patrol car was there within 15 minutes. When they heard that the body in question was from Ystad and had been the subject of an investigation they told Pålsson to contact us, which he did." Martinsson put his notes down. "The task of finding the body falls to our colleagues in Malmö," he said. "But I suppose it's also something that we have to concern ourselves with."

Wallander turned the matter over in his mind. It was a strange and unpleasant incident. His anxiety grew.

"We'll have to assume that our colleagues will think of searching for fingerprints," he said. "I don't know exactly what category this kind of crime falls into. Desecration of the dead? But there is a good chance they won't take it as seriously as we would like. Did Nyberg manage to secure any fingerprints from the substation?"

Martinsson thought about that. "I think so. Would you like me to call him?"

"Not right now. But I'd like Malmö to look for fingerprints on the relay and around the morgue."

"Right now?"

"I think that would be best."

Martinsson left to make the call. Wallander poured himself a cup of coffee and tried to understand what this could mean. A connection had emerged, but it might turn out to be an unlikely coincidence. He had experienced such things before. Yet something told him that it wouldn't be the case here. Someone had broken into a morgue and stolen a body, leaving an electrical relay in its place. It made Wallander think of something Rydberg had said many years ago, when they first started working together: "Criminals often leave a greeting at the scene of the crime. Sometimes it's deliberate, sometimes by accident."

This is no mistake, he thought. No-one just happens to have a big electrical relay on them. We were obviously going to find it and it was hardly a message for the pathologists. It was meant for us.

This led to the other question: why was the body stolen? He had heard of cases where the bodies of people who had been members of strange sects were removed. That hardly applied in the case of Falk, although it couldn't be entirely ruled out. But there was only one plausible explanation: the body had been removed so as to conceal something.

Martinsson returned. "We're in luck," he said. "They've put the relay in a plastic bag."

"Any prints?"

"They're working on it now."

"No sign of the body?"

"No."

"No witnesses?"

"Not as far as we know."

Wallander told him what he had been thinking. Martinsson agreed. The relay had to be a message, and the body removed to conceal something from them. Wallander also told him about Enander's visit and the phone call from Falk's ex-wife.

"I didn't put too much stock in what they told me," he said. "You have to be able to trust the coroner's report."

"Just because the body's been stolen doesn't mean Falk was murdered."

Martinsson was right.

"But if you remove the body, can it be other than to hide the manner of death?"

"What do we do now?"

"We need to determine who Falk was," Wallander said. "Since we closed the case so quickly, we had no need to look at his life closely. When I talked to the wife, she said that Falk was nervous and that he claimed to have enemies. In fact, she said a number of things that suggested he had a complicated life."

Martinsson made a face. "A computer consultant with enemies?"

"That is what she said, but none of us have spoken to her in any detail."

Martinsson was carrying the file with all the information they had on the Falk case.

"We never talked to his children," he said, checking the report. "We never talked to anyone since we concluded that he had died of natural causes."

"That's what we're still assuming," Wallander said. "It's as likely at this stage as anything else. What we have to acknowledge, however, is that there is some kind of connection between him and Hökberg. Perhaps even to Persson."

"Why not also with Lundberg?"

"You're right. Maybe also with the taxi driver."

"At least we know that Falk was already dead when Hökberg was killed," Martinsson said.

"And if we assume Falk was murdered, it may be by the same man who killed Hökberg."

Wallander saw that they were delving into something they didn't understand. We have to find the part where it comes together, he thought. We have to go deeper.

Martinsson yawned. He was usually asleep by this time, Wallander knew.

"The question is whether we can really get much further," he said. "We're not in a position to send out people to look for a missing body. Anyway, that's for Malmö to do."

"We should take a look at his flat," Martinsson said, stifling a new yawn. "He lived alone. We can start there and then talk to the wife."

"Ex-wife. He was divorced."

Martinsson got up. "I have to get some sleep. How's the car?"

"It'll be ready tomorrow."

"Do you want a lift?"

"No, I'm going to stay for a while."

Martinsson hesitated. "I know it must have upset you," he said. "The business with the picture in the paper."

Wallander looked at him closely. "What's your take on it?"

"On what?"

"Whether or not I'm guilty?"

"Clearly you slapped her. But I believe you. She was attacking her mother and you were trying to restrain her."

"Well, my mind's made up," Wallander said. "If they try to pin it on me, I'm resigning."

He was surprised by his own words. It had never before occurred to him to resign if the internal investigation came back with a guilty verdict.

"In that case we will have swapped roles," Martinsson said.

"How do you mean?"

"Then I'll be the one trying to convince you to stay."

"You'll never do it."

Martinsson didn't answer. He took the file and left. Wallander stayed at the table. A while later, two patrol officers on the night shift walked through the room. They nodded at him. Wallander listened absently to their conversation. One of them was thinking of buying a motorcycle in the spring. Once they had poured themselves coffee and left, Wallander was alone again. Without being entirely conscious of it, he had already arrived at a decision. He looked at his watch. It was almost 11.30 p.m. He ought to wait until the morning, but the sense of urgency was too great. He left the station shortly before midnight. He had a set of pass keys in his pocket.

It took him ten minutes to walk to Apelbergsgatan. It was overcast. There was a soft breeze and it was a few degrees above freezing. The town felt deserted. Some heavily laden trucks barrelled past him on their way to the Poland ferries. It occurred to Wallander that it was at about this time of night that Falk had died.

Wallander stopped in a shadow and looked at the apartment building at 10 Apelbergsgatan. The top floor was dark. That was Falk's floor. The flat below was also dark, but in the first-floor flat the lights were on. Wallander shivered. That was where he had once fallen asleep in the arms of a total stranger. He had been so drunk that when he woke up he hadn't known where he was.

He fingered the pass keys in his pocket and hesitated. What he was about to do was unnecessary as well as unlawful. There was no overwhelming reason not to wait until the morning. He could then arrange to get the keys to the flat, but his sense of urgency wouldn't let up. It was something he had learned to trust over the years.

The front door to the building was unlocked. The stairway was dark. He turned on the flashlight he had with him and listened for any sounds before starting up the stairs. There were two doors on the top floor. The one to the right was Falk's. He listened again, putting his ear to both doors. No sound. Then he gripped the little flashlight between his teeth and got out the pass keys. If Falk had fitted his door with special locks he might have been forced to give up at the outset, but he had only ordinary locks. That doesn't fit with what Mrs Falk said, he thought. That her ex-husband was worried and had enemies. She must have exaggerated.

It took him longer than expected to open the door. The pass keys felt strange in his hands and he had started to sweat. When the door finally opened he thought he heard breathing coming at him from out of the darkness. But then it was gone. He stepped into the hall and shut the door noiselessly behind him.

The first thing he always noticed about a flat was the smell. But here there wasn't one, as if the flat were new and no-one had moved in yet. He made a mental note of it and started to walk through the flat with the torch in his hand, expecting at any moment to find someone there. Only when he had assured himself that he was alone did he take off his shoes, shut the curtains, put on a pair of rubber gloves, and turn on a lamp.

Wallander was in the hall when the phone rang. He flinched and held his breath. The answering machine in the living room cut in and he hurried over to it. But the caller didn't leave a message. Who would have called a dead person's number in the middle of the night?

Wallander walked to one of the windows overlooking the street. He peered through a tiny slit in the curtains. The street was empty. He tried to penetrate the shadows with his gaze, but he saw no-one.

He started his search in the living room after turning on the desk lamp. Then he stood in the middle of the room and looked around. This is where Tynnes Falk lived, he thought. His story starts with a clean and well-ordered living room that is the very opposite of everyday chaos. There is leather furniture, a collection of maritime art on the walls. There's a big bookcase along one wall.

He walked to the desk. There was an old brass compass beside a green writing pad. Pens lay neatly in line next to an antique oil lamp made of clay.

Wallander continued out into the kitchen. There was a coffee cup on the counter, and a notepad on the kitchen table. Wallander turned on the light and looked at it. "Door to balcony," he read. Maybe Tynnes Falk and I have a lot in common, he thought. We both keep notepads in our kitchens. He walked back into the living room and tried the balcony door. It was too stiff to open. He walked into the bedroom. The double bed was made. Wallander kneeled and looked under it. He saw a pair of slippers.

He opened the wardrobe and pulled out all the drawers. Everything was neatly arranged. He went back to the living room. The instructions for the answering machine had been tucked in underneath it. When he was sure he could listen to the messages without erasing anything, he pressed the button.

First there was a message from someone called Jan who asked him how he was doing. He didn't say when he was calling. Then there were two calls from someone who only breathed at the other end. Wallander had the feeling it was the same person. The fourth call was from a tailor in Malmö, to let him know that his trousers were ready. Wallander made a note of the name. Then the most recent call, from the person who only breathed. Wallander listened to the sequence again and wondered if Nyberg could determine whether the mystery calls were from the same person.