Firewall (13 page)

He put the instruction manual back in its place. There were three framed, postcard-sized photographs on the desk, two of them probably of Falk's children. There was a boy and a girl. The boy was sitting on a rock in a tropical setting, smiling at the camera. He was around 18 years old. Wallander turned it over. "Jan, 1996, Amazonas". That must have been the boy who left the message on the answering machine. The girl was younger. She sat on a bench surrounded by pigeons. Wallander turned that picture over and read "Ina, Venice, 1995". The third photograph was of a group of men in front of a white stone wall. It was slightly out of focus. Wallander turned it over, but there was no legend. He studied the men's faces. They were of varying ages. To the far left there was a man who looked Asian. Wallander put the frame down and tried to think. Then he slipped the photograph into his pocket.

He lifted the green writing pad and found a newspaper clipping. "To make fish fondue". He went through the drawers, which were in the same meticulous order. In the third drawer he found a thick diary. Wallander opened it at the last entry. Sunday, October 5, Falk had noted that the wind had died down and that it was 3°C. The sky was clear and he had cleaned the flat. It had taken him 3 hours and 25 minutes, 10 minutes longer than last time.

Wallander frowned. The notes about the house cleaning perplexed him. Then he read the last line: "A short walk in the evening?" Did that mean he had already been for a walk, or was he about to go?

Wallander glanced at the entry for the previous day:
Saturday, October 4, 1997. Gusty winds, 8–10 metres per second according to the Meteorological Office. Broken cloud formations. Temperature at 6 a.m. 7°C Temperature at 2 p.m. 8°C. No activity in C-space today. No messages. C doesn't reply when prompted. All is calm.

Wallander read the last lines without being able to make sense of them. He flipped through the diary and saw that all the entries were similar, giving information about the weather as well as "C-space". Sometimes all was quiet, sometimes there were messages, but what kind of messages they were Wallander could not guess. Finally he closed the book and put it back.

It was strange that Falk had not written a single name anywhere, not even those of his children. He wondered if Falk was crazy. The diary entries could easily have been those of a manic or confused person.

Wallander walked to the window again. The street was still empty. It was already past 1 a.m.

He made one last search of the desk and found some business material. It seemed that Falk was a consultant who helped corporate clients choose and install the right computer system for their business. Wallander couldn't tell exactly what that involved, but he noted that a number of prominent companies, including several banks and Sydkraft Power, had been his clients. There was nothing really surprising anywhere. Wallander closed the last drawer.

Tynnes Falk is a person who doesn't leave any traces, he thought. Everything is impersonal, well ordered and impenetrable. I can't find him.

Somehow Hökberg's murder was connected to Falk's death, and also to the fact that his body had now disappeared. And there was perhaps a link to Johan Lundberg.

Wallander took the photograph frame from his pocket. He put it back. He wanted to make sure no-one found out about his visit. In case Mrs Falk let them in, he didn't want anything to be missing.

Wallander walked around the flat and turned out all the lights, then he opened all the curtains. He listened for sounds before opening the door. He checked the outside of the door, but the pass keys had left no mark.

Once he was back out on the street he paused and looked around. No-one was in sight, the town was quiet. He began walking home. It was 1.25 a.m. He never saw the shadow following him at a distance.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Wallander woke to the phone ringing. He sprang out of bed as if he had been lying in wait for the call rather than deeply asleep. As he put the receiver to his ear he glanced at the time. It was 5.15 a.m.

"Kurt Wallander?"

He did not recognise the voice on the line.

"Speaking."

"Excuse me for calling so early. I wanted to ask you one or two questions regarding the alleged assault."

Wallander was instantly alert. The man gave his name and the name of his newspaper. Wallander thought that he should have foreseen this. Any of his colleagues would have rung his mobile. At least that number was still totally private.

But it was too late now. He had to say something. "As I've already explained, it wasn't assault."

"So the photograph is a lie?"

"It doesn't tell the whole truth."

"Would you care to tell it now?"

"Not so long as I'm involved in the investigation."

"But you must be able to say something?"

"I already have. It wasn't assault."

Wallander hung up and unplugged the phone. He could already see the headlines:
DEFENSIVE SILENCE FROM POLICE. OFFICER HANGS UP ON REPORTER.
He sank back on to his pillows. The street light outside his window was swaying in the wind. The light flickered across the wall.

He had been dreaming something when the phone had rung. The images slowly re-emerged from his subconscious. They were images from last autumn, when he had taken a trip to the Östergötland archipelago. He had been invited by the postman who delivered post on the islands. He had accepted the invitation somewhat hesitantly. They had met during one of the worst cases Wallander had ever been involved in. One early morning the postman had taken him to explore one of the remote islands on the edge of the archipelago, where craggy rocks poked out of the sea like fossilised creatures from the ice age. As he had wandered around the small island on his own he had experienced a remarkable feeling of clarity. He had often returned to this moment in his thoughts, and longed to experience this feeling again. The dream is trying to tell me something, he thought. I just don't know what.

He stayed in bed until 5.45 a.m. when he got up and plugged the phone back in. He drank a cup of coffee as he tried to go through everything that had happened in his head, trying to make sense of the new connection drawn between Hökberg's death and the man whose flat he had searched last night.

By 7 a.m., he gave up trying to make sense of it and went in to the station. It was colder than he had anticipated. He wasn't yet accustomed to the fact that it was autumn. He wished he had put on a warmer sweater. As he walked he felt his left foot getting damp. He stopped and discovered a hole in the sole. It made him unaccountably furious. It was as much as he could do not to tear off both his shoes and continue in his stockinged feet.

As he passed through reception, he asked Irene who was in already. She told him that Martinsson and Hansson had arrived. Wallander asked her to send them in to see him. Then he changed his mind and decided to meet in one of the conference rooms. He asked her to send Höglund to join them when she arrived.

Martinsson and Hansson came in together.

"How did the lecture go?" Hansson asked.

"Let's not waste our time on that," Wallander said irritably, then felt bad that he should have taken his mood out on Hansson.

"I'm tired," he said.

"Who isn't?" Hansson said.

Höglund opened the door and came in.

"That's some wind," she said, taking off her jacket.

"Autumn is here," Wallander said. "All right, let's start. Something happened last night that dramatically alters the investigation."

He nodded to Martinsson, who told the others about the disappearance of Falk's body.

"At least this is something new," Hansson said when Martinsson had finished. "I don't think we've ever had a stolen body before. I know there was that rubber raft. But not a dead body."

Wallander made a face. He remembered the rubber raft that had floated ashore on Mossbystrand, and how afterwards the raft had mysteriously and by means still unclear disappeared from the station.

Höglund looked at him. "So are we to accept a connection between the man who died at the cash machine and Lundberg's murder? That seems ludicrous."

"Yes," Wallander said. "But I don't think we can avoid working with this assumption for now. I think we should also be prepared for the fact that this will be a difficult case. We thought we were dealing with an unusually brutal but clear-cut case of murder. We saw this scenario dissolve when Hökberg escaped and was later found dead at the power substation. We knew that a man had been found dead close to a cash machine, but we had already declared that case closed for lack of evidence that any crime had been committed. This conclusion still cannot be ruled out. Then the body disappears, and someone puts an electrical relay in its place."

Wallander paused and thought back to the questions he had regarding Hökberg and Persson's visit to the restaurant and the identity of the Asian man. He saw that they would have to start from a quite different angle.

"Someone breaks into a morgue and steals a body. We can't be sure of the motive, but it seems that someone wants to conceal something. At the same time the relay is left, as a kind of message, for us to find. Obviously it wasn't left by accident."

"Which can only mean one thing," Höglund said. "That someone wants us to see a connection between Hökberg and Falk."

"Couldn't it be a red herring?" Hansson said. "Put there by someone who's read about the girl being burned to death?"

"Malmö have assured me the relay is large and heavy," Martinsson said. "It's hardly the kind of thing you would carry around with you."

"We'll take it step by step," Wallander said. "Nyberg will examine the relay and determine whether it originates from our substation. If it does, then we're home and dry."

"Not necessarily," Höglund said. "It could still be partly symbolic."

Wallander shook his head. "I don't get that feeling in this case."

Martinsson telephoned Nyberg while the others went to get coffee. Wallander told them about the reporter who had woken him up that morning.

"It'll soon blow over," Höglund said.

"I hope you're right."

They returned to the conference room.

"Listen," Wallander said. "We have to get serious with Persson. It doesn't matter any more that she's a juvenile. We've got to throw away the kid gloves and start getting some real answers. That will be up to you, Ann-Britt. You know what questions to ask and I don't want you to give up until she starts telling the truth."

They planned the next stages of the investigation. Wallander realised that his cold had gone and that his strength was returning. They finished around 9.30. a.m. Hansson and Höglund disappeared down the corridor to their appointed tasks. Wallander and Martinsson were going to examine Falk's flat together. Wallander was tempted to tell him about his visit the night before, but decided against it. It was one of his faults, this tendency not to advise his colleagues of all the avenues he was exploring in a case, but he had long ago given up hope that he would be able to mend this trait.

While Martinsson arranged to get keys to the flat, Wallander went to his office with a newspaper that Hansson had earlier thrown on the table. He flipped through it. There was a small item about a police officer suspected of the use of excessive force against a juvenile offender. He was not named, but his sense of outrage revived.

He was about to put the paper aside when his gaze fell on the personal ads. He started reading. There was an ad from a divorced 50-year-old woman who said she felt lonely now that her children were grown up. She listed her interests as travel and classical music. Wallander tried to imagine what she looked like, but he kept seeing the face of a woman called Erika whom he had met at a roadside café in Västervik a year ago. He had thought about her from time to time. He threw the paper into the waste-paper basket, but just before Martinsson appeared he fished it out, tore off the page with the ad and slipped it into a drawer.

"His wife will meet us there with the keys," Martinsson said. "Do you want to walk or take the car?"

"The car," Wallander said. "I have a hole in my shoe."

Martinsson gave him an amused look. "What would the national chief of police say about that?"

"We've already put in train his community policing ideas," Wallander said. "Why not expand them to include barefoot policing?"

They left the station in Martinsson's car.

"How are things with you?" Martinsson said.

"I'm fed up," Wallander said. "You'd think you get used to all this, but you don't. During my years in the force I've been accused of almost everything, with the possible exception of being lazy. You'd think you'd develop a thick skin, but you don't. At least not in the way you'd hope."

"Did you mean what you said yesterday?"

"What did I say?"

"That you'd leave if they found you guilty."

"I don't know. I don't think I have the energy to think about it right now."

Wallander didn't want to talk more about it and Martinsson knew to leave him alone. They parked outside 10 Apelbergsgatan. A woman was waiting for them.

"That must be Marianne Falk," Martinsson said. "She obviously kept her name after the divorce."

Martinsson was about to open the car door when Wallander stopped him.

"Does she know what's happened? About the body being missing?"

"Someone rang her."

They got out. The woman standing there in the wind was very well dressed. She was tall and slender and reminded Wallander vaguely of Mona. They said hello. Wallander could tell that she was angry and upset. He was immediately alert.

"Have they found the body? How can things like this happen?"

Wallander let Martinsson answer. "It's very unfortunate, of course."

"Unfortunate? It's unacceptable. What do we have a police force for anyway?"

"There's a question," Wallander said. "But I think we should deal with that another time."

They went into the building and went upstairs. Wallander was uneasy. Had he left anything behind last night?

Marianne Falk walked ahead of them. When she came to the top landing she stopped, pointing to the door. Martinsson was right behind her. Wallander pushed him aside. Then he saw. The door to the flat was wide open. The locks he had taken so much trouble with, trying to leave no trace of his visit, had been broken with something like a crowbar. Wallander listened for sounds. Martinsson was beside him. Neither of them was carrying a weapon. Wallander hesitated. He signalled them to go down to the floor below.

"There could be someone in there," he whispered. "We had better get some back-up."

Martinsson got out his phone.

"I want you to wait in your car," Wallander told Mrs Falk.

"What's happened?"

"Please just do as I say. Wait in your car."

She disappeared down the stairs. Martinsson was talking to someone at the station.

"They're on their way."

They waited motionless on the stairs. There were no sounds coming from the flat.

"I told them not to turn on the sirens," Martinsson whispered.

Wallander nodded.

Eight minutes later Hansson appeared on the stairs with three other officers. Hansson had a gun. Wallander took a gun from one of the other policemen.

"Let's go in," he said.

The hand holding the gun was very slightly shaking. Wallander was afraid. He was always afraid when he was about to tackle a situation where anything was possible. He established eye contact with Hansson, then called out into the flat. There was no answer. He shouted again. Then the door behind them opened and he jumped. An old woman appeared, peering into the hall. Martinsson forced her back inside. Wallander called out a third time. Still no answer.

Then they went in.

The flat was empty. But it was not the flat he had left the night before with an impression of meticulous order. All the drawers had been pulled out and emptied onto the floor. Paintings hung askew and a record collection lay shattered on the floor.

"There's no-one here," he said. "Let's get Nyberg and his people here as soon as possible. I don't want us disturbing the area more than we have to."

Hansson and the others left. Martinsson set off to interview the neighbours. Wallander stood in the doorway to the living room and looked about him. How many times had he stood in a flat like this where a crime had been committed? Without being able to put his finger on it, he knew there was something changed. Something was missing. He let his gaze travel slowly through the room. When he was looking at the desk for the second time he realised what it was. He took off his shoes and approached the table.