Firewall (43 page)

He looked at the sunlight reflected in the water.

She shouted to him that his minute was up. He walked back.

"I think it's a good thing," he said. "I think you'll be just the kind of police officer we're going to need in the future."

"Do you mean that?"

"Every word of it."

"I was worried about how you would 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 hungry."

They went back to the car and on 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 realise what she was in for? The fatigue and the burn-out?

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 run-of-the-mill 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 influence they wield. How much human suffering have they caused?"

"Are you sympathetic to Carter and Falk and their cause?"

"No," she said. "At least not to the means they chose to fight back."

Wallander became steadily convinced that her decision was a long time in the making, not an impulse that she would come to regret.

"I'm sure I'm going to need to ask you for advice," she said, before going to bed.

"Don't be too sure I have any advice to give."

Wallander stayed up for a while after she had gone to bed. It was 2.30 a.m. 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 in front of him a burning wall. He readied himself. Then he ran straight through the wall. He only singed his hair and his skin. He opened his eyes and smiled. Something was behind him. Something else was only just beginning.

The following day, Friday, November 14, the stock markets in Asia unexpectedly began to fall. Many explanations were offered, not a few of them contradictory. But no-one managed to answer the most important question: what was it that had set the process in motion?