Firewall (8 page)

A quarter of Skåne was without power. It was dark from Trelleborg to Kristianstad. The hospitals were using their emergency generators, but otherwise the power cut was total. A Sydkraft executive had been reached and had said that the problem had been located. He was expecting the power in most areas to be restored in half an hour.

There won't be any power coming from here in half an hour, that's for sure, Wallander thought. He wondered if the executive really knew what had happened.

I have to let Lisa Holgersson know about this, he thought. He reached for Martinsson's mobile phone and dialled her number. It took a while for her to answer.

"Wallander here. Have you noticed the power's off?"

"A blackout? I was sleeping."

Wallander explained the situation. She became fully alert.

"Do you want me to come down?"

"I think you should get in touch with Sydkraft and tell them that their power problem now also involves a police investigation."

"What do you think has happened? Is it a suicide?"

"I can't tell. I don't know."

"What about sabotage? A terrorist act?"

"I don't think we can answer that question yet either. In fact, we can't rule out any of these things."

"I'll call Sydkraft. Keep me posted."

Wallander hung up. Hansson came running through the rain over to the car. Wallander opened the door.

"Nyberg is on his way. How did things look in there?"

"Pretty bad. There was nothing left, not even a face."

Hansson didn't answer. He ran through the rain, back to his own car.

Twenty minutes later Wallander saw the lights of Nyberg's car appear in the rear-view mirror. Wallander stepped out of the car and greeted him. Nyberg looked tired.

"What is it that's happened exactly? I couldn't get one coherent sentence out of Hansson."

"We have a dead body in there. Burned to a crisp. Nothing left."

Nyberg looked around. "That's what usually happens when high-voltage transformers are involved. Is that why the power's out?"

"Seems so."

"Does that mean half of Skåne will be waiting for me to finish?"

"We're not going to take that into consideration. I think they're working on restoring the power anyway, working their way around this substation."

"We live in a vulnerable society," Nyberg said, and immediately started instructing his crew of technicians.

Erik Hökberg said the same thing, Wallander thought. We live in a vulnerable society. His computers will have been shut off by this, if he sits up with them at night trying to make more money.

Nyberg worked quickly and efficiently. Soon all the spotlights were up and running, connected to a noisy generator. Martinsson and Wallander went back to the car. Martinsson flipped through his notes.

"Andersson was called by a central command employee called Ågren. They had pinpointed the blackout to this substation. Andersson lives in Svarte. It took him 20 minutes to get here. He found that the outside gates had been tampered with, but that the inner steel door was simply unlocked. When he looked in he saw what had happened."

"Did he see anything else?"

"There was no-one here when he arrived and he didn't see anyone walking around."

Wallander thought for a moment. "We have to get to the bottom of this business of the keys," he said.

Andersson was talking with Ågren on the radio when Wallander got into his car. He immediately finished the conversation.

"I understand that you're pretty shaken up by this," Wallander said.

"I've never seen anything so terrible. What happened exactly?"

"We don't know that yet. Now, when you arrived on the scene the gates had been forced open, but the steel door had been opened without any visible sign of its being forced. How do you explain that?"

"I can't."

"Who else has a copy of these keys?"

"Only another repairman called Moberg. He lives in Ystad. And the main office, of course. There the security is always very tight."

"But someone did unlock the steel door?"

"That's what it looks like."

"I take it that these keys can't be copied."

"The locks are made in the United States. They're supposed to be impossible to force."

"What's Moberg's first name?"

"Lars."

"Is it possible that someone forgot to lock the door?"

Andersson shook his head. "That would be grounds for instant dismissal. The security is very thorough. If anything, it has got tighter in the past few years."

Wallander had no other questions for the moment. "I'd like you to remain here for now," he said, "in case any other puzzles come up. I'd also like you to call Moberg and ask him if he still has his keys for the steel door."

Wallander got out of the car. The rain was tailing off. The conversation with Andersson had increased his anxiety. It was just possible that someone wanting to commit suicide had come out here to this substation, but the facts were starting to line up against this hypothesis. Among other things was the fact that the steel door had been opened with keys. Wallander knew where this thought was leading: murder. The victim had then been disposed of in the power lines to destroy the clues.

Wallander walked into the beam of the spotlights. The photographer had just finished taking his pictures and video clips. Nyberg was kneeling by the body. He muttered irritably when Wallander walked into his light.

"What's your take on this?"

"That it's taking the pathologist an awfully long time to get out here. I want to move the body to see if there's anything behind it."

"I mean your take on what could have happened."

Nyberg thought for a while. "It's a macabre way to commit suicide. If it's murder, it's exceptionally brutal. It would be the equivalent of executing your victim in the electric chair."

That's right, Wallander thought. That leads us to the possibility that it's an act of revenge. Taking revenge through executing someone in a very special kind of electric chair.

Nyberg went on with his work. One of his technicians had started to scout the area between the building and the gates. The pathologist arrived, a woman Wallander had met before. Her name was Susann Bexell and she was a woman of few words. She got down to business at once. Nyberg got his thermos from his bag and had a cup of coffee. He offered Wallander some. Wallander decided to accept. They would get no more sleep that night anyway. Martinsson turned up at their side, wet and stiff. Wallander passed him his cup of coffee.

"They're beginning to restore power," Martinsson said. "Parts of Ystad already have some light. I have no idea how they managed to do that."

"Has Andersson spoken to his colleague Moberg about the keys?"

Martinsson walked off to find out. Wallander saw that Hansson was sitting rigidly behind his steering wheel. He walked over and told Hansson to return to the station. Most of Ystad was still dark, after all, and he would be of more use there than here. Hansson nodded gratefully and drove away. Wallander walked over to the pathologist.

"Have you learned anything about him?"

Susann Bexell looked up.

"Just enough to tell you that this is a woman."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, but I'm not going to answer any other questions for now."

"Just one more. Was she dead when she got here, or was it the power that killed her?"

"I don't know that yet."

Wallander turned round, lost in thought. He had been assuming the victim was a man.

At that moment the technician, searching between the gates, came to Nyberg with something in his hand. Wallander joined them. It was a woman's handbag. Wallander stared at it. At first he thought he was making a mistake. Then he knew he had seen it before. More specifically, yesterday.

"I found it to the north by the fence," said the technician, whose name was Ek.

"Is the body in there a woman?" Nyberg asked, in surprise.

"Not only that," Wallander said. "Now we know who she is."

The handbag had been on a desk inside the interrogation room. It had a clasp that looked like an oak leaf. There was no mistaking it.

"This bag belongs to Sonja Hökberg," he said. "She's the one in there."

It was 2.10 a.m. The rain came on more heavily.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The power in Ystad was restored shortly after 3 a.m. At that time Wallander was still working with the technicians at the substation. Hansson called from the police station and told him the news. Wallander could see lights come on in the distance on the outside of a barn.

The pathologist had finished her work, the body had been removed and Nyberg had been able to continue his forensic investigation. He had asked Andersson to explain the complicated network of lines and switches inside the transformer building. Outside, his technicians worked to find any traces that might have been left behind. The rain was making for difficult working conditions. Martinsson slipped in the mud and bruised his elbow. Wallander was shivering with cold and longed for his Wellingtons.

Soon after the power was restored in Ystad, Wallander took Martinsson with him to one of the police cars. There they mapped out the information they had gathered so far. Hökberg had escaped from the police station about 13 hours earlier. She could have made it to the substation on foot, but neither Wallander nor Martinsson thought it plausible. It was, after all, 3 kilometres to Ystad.

"Someone would have seen her," Martinsson said. "Our cars were out looking for her."

"Double-check to see if a patrol car came this way."

"What's the alternative?"

"That someone gave her a lift. Someone who left her and drove off."

They both knew what that implied. The question of how Hökberg had died was still the most pressing. Did she commit suicide or was she murdered?

"The keys," Wallander said. "The gates were forced, but not the door. Why?"

They searched for a rational explanation.

"We need a list of anyone who could possibly have had access to the keys," Wallander said. "I want every key holder accounted for, and what they were doing last night."

"I have trouble getting this to hang together," Martinsson said. "Hökberg commits murder. Then she gets murdered herself? Suicide makes more sense."

Wallander didn't answer. There were a number of thoughts in his head, but they weren't connecting with each other. He went over and over the one and only conversation he had had with Hökberg.

"You talked to her first," Wallander said. "What was your impression of her?"

"Same as yours. That she felt no remorse, and might just as well have killed an insect as an old taxi driver."

"That doesn't suggest suicide to me. Why would she kill herself if she felt no remorse?"

Martinsson turned off the windscreen wipers. They could see Andersson waiting in his car and beyond him Nyberg was helping to move a spotlight. His movements were brusque. Wallander could tell that he was both angry and impatient.

"Well, is there anything that suggests it was murder?"

"No," Wallander said. "There's nothing to indicate either possibility, therefore we have to keep them both open. But I think we can rule out accidental death."

After a while Wallander asked Martinsson to make sure the investigative team was ready to meet at 8 a.m. Then he got out of the car. The rain had stopped. He felt how tired he was, and how cold. His throat ached. He walked over to Nyberg, who was wrapping up work in the transformer building.

"Have you found anything?"

"No."

"Does Andersson have anything to say?"

"About what? Forensic investigations?"

Wallander silently counted to ten before going on. Nyberg was in a very bad mood. Saying the wrong thing would make him impossible to talk to.

"He can't determine what happened," Nyberg said after a while. "The body caused the power break, but whether it was a dead body or a living person who was thrown down there only the pathologist can say. And she may not be able to tell either."

Wallander nodded. He looked down at his watch. It was 3.30 a.m. There was no point in staying any longer.

"I'm going to take off now. But we have a meeting at 8 a.m."

Nyberg muttered something unintelligible. Wallander took that to mean he would be there. Then he returned to the car where Martinsson was making notes.

"We're going," he said. "You'll have to take me home."

They returned to Ystad in silence. When Wallander got back to his flat he ran a bath. While the bath was filling up he swallowed the last of his painkillers and added them to the list on the kitchen table. He wondered, helplessly, when he would next be able to stop at the chemist's.

His body thawed out in the warm water. He dozed off for a while, his mind a blank, but then the images returned. Sonja Hökberg and Eva Persson. Slowly he rehearsed the events. He proceeded steadily so as not to forget anything. Nothing made any sense. Why had Lundberg been killed? What had motivated Hökberg and made Persson go along with it? He was sure it wasn't a random impulse. They needed the money for something very particular, or else it was all about something entirely different.

There had only been about 30 kronor in the handbag that they had found at the substation. The money from the robbery had been confiscated by the police.

She ran away, he thought. Suddenly she sees a chance to get away. It's 10 a.m. Nothing could have been planned in advance. She leaves the police station and disappears for 13 hours until her body is found 8 kilometres from Ystad.

How did she get there? he thought. She could have hitchhiked. But she could also have called someone to come and pick her up. And then what? Does she ask to be driven to a spot where she commits suicide? Or is she murdered? And who has access to the keys that open the door, but not the ones for the gates?

Wallander got out of the bath. There are two central questions, he thought. If she had decided to commit suicide, why pick the substation, and how did she get the keys? And if she was murdered, then why? And by whom?

Wallander crawled into bed and pulled up the sheets. It was 4.30 a.m. His head was spinning and he was too tired to think. He had to sleep. Before turning out the light he set his alarm clock. He then pushed the clock as far away from his bed as possible, so he would be forced to get out of bed to turn it off.

When he woke up he felt as if he had only been sleeping for a couple of minutes. He tried to swallow. His throat was still sore, but it seemed better than the day before. He felt his forehead. The fever was gone, but he was congested. He walked to the bathroom and blew his nose, avoiding his reflection in the mirror. His whole body ached with fatigue. While he was waiting for the water for his coffee, he looked out of the window. It was still windy, but the rain clouds were gone. It was 5°C. He wondered, vaguely, when he would ever have time to do anything about his car.

They met in one of the conference rooms at the station a little after 8 a.m. Wallander looked at Martinsson and Hansson's tired faces and wondered what his own face must be like. Holgersson, however, who also could not have slept many hours, seemed undimmed. She called the meeting to order.

"We need to be perfectly clear about the fact that last night's power cut was one of the most serious ever to have hit Skåne. That displays the extent of our vulnerability. What happened should have been impossible, but happened anyway. Now the authorities, power companies and law enforcement will have to discuss how security can be stepped up. This is just by way of introduction."

She nodded to Wallander to carry on. He gave a brief summary of the events.

"In other words, we don't know what happened," he said finally. "We don't know if it was an accident, suicide or murder, although we can reasonably rule out an accident. Either she was alone or she had someone with her who had broken through the outside gates. After that they apparently had access to keys. The whole thing is bizarre to say the least."

He looked round at the others gathered around the table. Martinsson reported that several police cars had on different occasions driven along the road to the power substation while they were looking for Hökberg.

"Then we know this much," Wallander said. "Someone drove her there. Were there any car tracks found?"

He directed that question to Nyberg who sat at the other end of the table with bloodshot eyes and wild hair. Wallander knew how much he was looking forward to his retirement.

"Apart from our own cars and that of Andersson, we found tracks belonging to two other vehicles. But there was a hell of a rainstorm last night and the impressions weren't too clear."

"But two other cars had been there?"

"Andersson seemed to think one of them could have belonged to his colleague, Moberg. We're still checking that."

"That leaves one set of tracks unaccounted for?"

"Yes."

Ann-Britt Höglund, who hadn't said anything up to this point, now raised her hand.

"Could it really be anything other than murder?" she said. "Like all of you, I don't see Hökberg committing suicide. And even if she had decided to end her life, I can't imagine she would have chosen to
burn
herself to death."

Wallander was reminded of an incident that occurred a few years earlier. A young woman from somewhere in Central America had burned to death by pouring petrol all over herself in the middle of a linseed field. It was one of his most horrific memories. He had been there, he had seen the girl set light to herself, and he had not been able to do anything about it.

"Women take pills," Höglund was saying. "Women rarely shoot themselves. And I don't think they would throw themselves on a power line."

"I think you're right," Wallander said. "But we have to wait for the pathologist's report. None of us who were out there last night was able to determine what happened."

There were no other questions.

"The keys," Wallander said. "We need to make sure none of the keys were stolen. That's the first thing we need to establish."

Martinsson volunteered to check on the keys. They ended the meeting and Wallander went to his office, collecting a cup of coffee on his way there. The telephone was ringing. It was Irene from reception.

"There's someone here to see you," she said.

"Who is it?"

"His name is Enander and he's a doctor."

Wallander searched his mind without being able to come up with a face. "Send him to someone else."

"I've tried that, but he insists on speaking to you. And he says it's urgent."

Wallander sighed. "I'll be right out," he said and put the phone down.

The man in reception was middle-aged, he had cropped hair and was dressed in a tracksuit. Wallander noted his firm handshake. He said his name was David Enander.

"I'm very busy," Wallander said. "The power cut last night has created a good deal of chaos. I can only spare a few minutes. What is it you wanted to see me about?"

"I'd like to clear up a misunderstanding."

Wallander waited for him to continue, but he didn't. They walked to his office. The armrest came off the chair that Enander sat down in.

"Don't worry about it," Wallander said. "It was broken already."

Enander got right to the point. "I'm here about Tynnes Falk."

"That case is closed as far as we're concerned. He died of natural causes."

"That's the misunderstanding I wanted to raise with you," Enander said, stroking his cropped hair with one hand.

Wallander saw he was anxious about something. "I'm listening."

Enander took his time. He chose his words carefully. "I've been Falk's physician for many years. He became my patient in 1981, that is, 15-plus years ago. He came to me first because of a rash on his hands. I was working at that time in the skin clinic at the hospital, but I opened a private practice in 1986 and Falk followed me there. He was rarely sick, but I looked after his regular check-ups. He was a man who wanted to know the state of his health. He took great care of himself. He ate well, exercised and had very regular habits."

Wallander wondered what Enander was driving at and was growing impatient.

"I was away when he died," Enander said. "I only found out last night."

"How did you hear?"

"His ex-wife called me."

Wallander nodded for him to continue.

"She said the cause of death was a massive coronary."

"That's what we were told."

"The thing is, that can't possibly be true."

Wallander raised his eyebrows. "And why not?"

"It's very simple. As little as ten days ago I did a complete physical check-up on Falk. His heart was in excellent condition. He had the stamina of a 20-year-old."

Wallander thought this through. "So what is it you're saying? That the pathologist made a mistake?"

"I'm aware that a heart attack can, in rare cases, strike down a perfectly healthy person. But I can't accept that this was what happened in Falk's case."