Firewall (33 page)

Wallander escorted him back to reception.

"Did you have regular meetings with Falk?"

"I took care of most of the business over the phone."

"So you didn't have to meet in person?"

"It's often sufficient to circulate documents and have people sign them in their own time."

Stenius left the station, unfurling his umbrella as he went. 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. We're working our fingers to the bone, but the justice system is degenerating into a crumbling warehouse of unsolved cases.

At 3.30 p.m., the investigative team gathered for a meeting. Nyberg sent his apologies. Höglund reported that he was suffering from vertigo. They speculated gloomily who among them would be the first to suffer a heart attack. Then they launched into the discussion about Hökberg's rape and its possible consequences for the case. Wallander insisted 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 said. "What kind of a family is that?"

"We have to know all the facts," Wallander said.

"I can't swallow 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 round the table had noticed it. He hurried on in a more friendly tone.

"What about the National Police and their computer specialists? What did they say?"

"Well, they whined when I insisted that someone come down right away, but someone will be here by 9 a.m. tomorrow."

"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 said.

"Yes. I made plenty of notes while Modin was working."

They finished the meeting by talking about Jonas Landahl. Hansson had already contacted his parents and received information over the phone that enabled them to identify the body. The couple 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 knew that Landahl had no previous record, but that did not mean that he had not been involved in the releasing of the minks at the farm in Sölvesborg, when Falk had been apprehended.

It was almost 6 p.m. 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 flat and get himself ready before Elvira arrived. But he went to his office and called Nyberg. It took so long for him to answer that Wallander was getting worried. Finally he answered, furious as usual, and Wallander was able to relax. Nyberg said he was feeling better and would be at work the following day.

Wallander had just managed to tidy up in his flat and change his clothes when the phone rang. Elvira 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, when he suddenly remembered that he and Linda had agreed to talk this evening. He thought for a while and then decided to leave the number of the restaurant on his answerphone in case anyone needed to reach him. There was a chance that a journalist would call, but he decided that it was only a small one. Interest in the scandal seemed to have died down.

He left the car at home and walked. It had stopped raining and the wind had also died down. Wallander was feeling a twinge of disappointment. She had taken the car and not the train. That meant she was planning to return to Malmö this evening. But his hopes were unreasonable. 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 bookshop on the main square and waited. After about 5 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. They were passing the building where Svedberg had lived. Wallander stopped and told her about what had happened here. She listened attentively.

"How do you feel about it now?" she said.

"I don't know. It's like a bad dream. Something I can't accept really 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, by way of an apology. "But the food is supposed to be good."

A waitress whom Wallander recognised from the Continental Hotel showed them to their table.

"You took the car," Wallander said, studying the wine list.

"Yes, I thought I'd drive back."

"Then I'll be drinking 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 breath 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 very junior policeman in Malmö and been almost stabbed to death. She asked him about the cases he was involved in now and he was persuaded that she knew nothing about the picture in the paper. He told her about the strange death at the power substation, about the man who had been found at the cash machine and the boy who had been thrown between the propeller shafts on the Poland ferry.

They had just ordered coffee when the door to the restaurant opened. It was Modin. 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 need to speak privately, I can leave," Elvira said.

"There's no need."

"I asked my dad to drive me from Löderup," Modin said. "I found out where you were from your answerphone."

"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 first thing tomorrow," Wallander said. "I'll tell him in advance of this development."

"I'm pretty sure I'm right."

"There was no need for you to come all this way," Wallander said. "You could have phoned 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 buff 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 to Stortorget. Her car was parked on Hamngatan.

"I've had a wonderful time," she said when they said goodbye.

"You're not tired of me yet?"

"No. What about you?"

Wallander wanted her to stay longer, but he knew he had to let her go. They said they would talk again over the weekend. He gave her a hug. She left, and Wallander made his way home. Suddenly he stopped in the middle of the street. Is it possible? he thought. Have I really met someone? He walked on to Mariagatan and fell asleep shortly after 1 a.m.

Elvira Lindfeldt drove towards Malmö through the darkness. Short of Rydsgård she pulled into a parking space by the side of the road. She dialled a number in Luanda. She tried three times before she got through. It was not a good connection. When she heard Carter on the line, she came straight to the point.

"Fu Cheng was right. The person who is killing our system is called Robert Modin. He lives outside Ystad in a village called Löderup."

She repeated it until she was sure that he understood what she had said, and then the connection was broken.

She drove back onto the main road and continued on to Malmö.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Wallander called Linda on Saturday morning. He had woken at dawn but had managed to get back to sleep until shortly after 8 a.m. When he had finished breakfast, he called her flat in Stockholm. He woke her up. She asked him why had he not been at home the evening before. Twice she had called the number he had left on the answering machine, but it had been engaged both times. Wallander decided to tell her the truth. She listened without interrupting him.

"I never would have thought," she said, "that you had enough brains in your thick head to take my advice for once."

"I had my doubts."

"But not any more?"

She asked about Elvira and they talked for a long time. She was happy for him, though he kept trying to play it down. It was too early to read something into it. For now, it was enough not to have spent another Friday night alone.

"That's not true," she said. "I know you. You're hoping this will turn out to be the real thing. So am 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 simply made up my mind it couldn't be true."

"It isn't."

He told her what had actually happened, and about the internal investigation. He told her he was confident the truth would come out.

"It's important for me to hear this right now," she said. "It's very important right now."

"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. If he ever raised the subject, she always changed it. They ended their conversation by talking about when she was next coming to Ystad. She thought she could make it in mid-November, but not before.

Wallander put the phone down and wondered if she would ever get a real job and think of settling 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 pointless trying to guess what she was up to. He looked at the time. It was 8.20 a.m. Martinsson would soon be picking up Alfredsson, the computer specialist 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, but something inside him stopped him from having more contact with Martinsson than absolutely necessary. He had lingering doubts about what Höglund had told him, doubts which 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 believed he had trained Martinsson the way Rydberg had trained him, but Wallander had never been tempted to or had any wish 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 maelstrom. I'm a leader whose successor is getting impatient.

Overcoming his reluctance, he called Martinsson on his mobile. 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 had just parked and was on his way to the terminal. Modin had not yet 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 any more?"

"You'll have to ask him that."

"He's wily," Martinsson said. "I wouldn't put it past him to have copied some of that material onto his own computer."

Martinsson said he would call Modin, and they agreed to be in touch again in the afternoon.

Wallander felt that Martinsson sounded absolutely 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 8.45 a.m. 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.

The coffee machine in the canteen had been fixed. Nyberg was eating his breakfast. Wallander sat across from him.

"If you ask me about my vertigo, I'm leaving," Nyberg said.

"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 wretched."

Wallander knew it wasn't true. Nyberg was tired and worn out, but he was probably just afraid of being retired.

"Is there any word from the coroner's office on Landahl?"

"He died around 3 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 disembark."

"What we all should have done was choose a different career," Nyberg said.

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 organised and could always judge which aspects of a case were most urgent and which could wait. He got up.

"I've been thinking," Nyberg said.

Wallander waited, all ears. Nyberg had an uncanny ability to come up with crucial observations. More than once he had helped to turn a case completely around.

"What have you been thinking?"

"About that relay in the morgue. About the handbag by the fence. And the body with the missing two fingers put back at the cash machine. We've been trying to find a meaning in all of this, to get the bits 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 going on.

"I talked to Höglund yesterday. She filled me in on what you talked about at the meeting. Apparently you had stressed the double meaning in the events of this case. You said there was both something deliberate and accidental about the events. Is that right?"

"Something like that."

"Well, what happens if we take this a stage further and assume that there is both planning and coincidence at work here?"

Wallander had nothing to say and waited for Nyberg to go on.

"So I had an idea. What if we are overinterpreting what's happened? First, we suppose that the murder of the taxi driver is much less significant than we thought. What if that is true about the other things as well? What if much of what has happened is meant to lead us astray, as it were?"

"What are you thinking of specifically?"

"For a start, this relay."

"Are you saying that Falk had nothing to do with Hökberg's murder?"

"No. But I believe that someone wants us to think that Falk had more to do with it than he did."

Wallander was getting very interested.

"Or his body turning up again. What if we assume that 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 reach solid ground."

"A good image," Nyberg said approvingly. "I didn't think anyone would ever be able to top Rydberg as far as apt analogies went, but I wonder if you aren't even sharper than he was. We're wading our way through a swamp, exactly where someone wants us to be."

"And we need to find our way back to solid ground?"

"Take the business of the fence. We've been driving ourselves nuts trying to work out why the outer gate was forced and the inner door was unlocked."

Wallander could see what Nyberg was driving at, and it irritated him that he hadn't picked up on this himself. "So whoever unlocked the door later damaged the outer gate simply to confuse us. Is that what you mean?"

"It looks like the best explanation to me."

"I'm embarrassed I haven't seen this myself until now," Wallander said.

"You can't think of everything yourself."

"Are there any other aspects we should ignore?"

"No. We only need to proceed cautiously and weigh up each development. Decide if it's important or not."

Nyberg stood up, signalling the end of the conversation. He walked over to the sink to wash his plate. The last thing Wallander heard before leaving the canteen was Nyberg complaining about the worn-out bristles on the brush.

Wallander paused at Hansson's office. His door was open and he was filling in his betting slips. Wallander knocked to give him 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 doorpost while Hansson searched through his ever-increasing piles of paper.

"I did as you said and went through the records 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 said. "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 St Jörgen, but the company checked and they have no guest of that name."

Wallander frowned. "That's strange. You wouldn't think this Fu Cheng would risk being shown up like that."

"There's a possible explanation," Hansson said. "There
was
a man of Asian appearance staying at the St Jörgen, name of Andersen and he came from Denmark. The car company checked his description with the hotel staff and are convinced it was the same man."

"How did he pay for his room?"

"Cash."

"He would have to have given them a home address."

Hansson searched for another piece of paper in his pile. A betting slip fell to the ground without his noticing and Wallander kindly ignored it.

"Here we are. An address in Vedbaek."

"Has anyone checked it out?"

"The car company has been extremely persistent. No doubt the van was a valuable asset. The street he wrote down doesn't exist."

"And that's where the tracks stop," Wallander said.

"Do we keep looking for the van?"

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 towards the heaps of paper. "I don't know how we're to get all this other stuff done at the same time."

Wallander didn't have the energy for yet another discussion of chronic police understaffing.

"We'll talk later," he said and left. He cast a quick eye over the latest papers to have landed on his desk, then took his coat and prepared to go to check on Alfredsson. He was curious as to how the meeting with Robert Modin would go. But after he got behind the wheel he did not immediately start the engine. His thoughts turned to his dinner with Elvira. It was a long time since he had felt so good. It was hard to believe it was true. But Elvira was real. She was no mirage.

He couldn't resist the impulse to call her up. He took out his mobile and dialled the number he had already memorised. She answered after the third ring. She said she was happy to hear from him, but Wallander felt sure he had interrupted her. He couldn't put his finger on it, but 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 over here last night."

"Oh, there's no need, 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 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 cleaning my flat."