Firewall Read online

  "Hold on," Wallander said. "I have a few more questions for you. Take a break. I'll be outside."

  Wallander was waiting impatiently for her in the corridor when she emerged. He told her at once about the seat changes and the man who had been sitting at the only table of which Hökberg had a clear view. He could see that she was not convinced.

  "An Asian man?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you really think this is important?"

  "Hökberg changed seats because she wanted to have eye contact with someone. That has to mean something."

  She shrugged. "I'll ask Persson. But what is it exactly that you want an answer to?"

  "Why they changed places, and when. Watch to see if she's lying. And did she notice the man who sat behind her?"

  "It's hard to tell anything about what's going on inside her."

  "Is she sticking to her new story?"

  "Hökberg both hit and stabbed Lundberg. Persson knew nothing in advance."

  "How did she react when you told her that Hökberg was dead?"

  "She acted sad, but she didn't do a very good job. I think she was in fact quite shocked."

  "So you don't think she already knew?"

  "No. The mother has hired a lawyer, Klas Harrysson. He's filed charges against you."

  Wallander didn't recognise the name.

  "He's a young, ambitious lawyer from Malmö. Seems very sure of himself."

  Wallander was smitten by a wave of tiredness. Then the anger came back, as well as the sense of being unfairly treated.

  "Did you get anything new?"

  "Honestly, I think Persson is a little stupid but she's sticking to her story – the later version. She sounds like a recording."

  "There's something more than meets the eye with Lundberg's murder," Wallander said. "I'm convinced of it."

  Höglund went back to questioning Persson, and Wallander went back to his room. He tried, without success, to find Martinsson. Hansson wasn't in either. Then he leafed through the messages Irene had handed him. Most of the callers were reporters, but there was also a message from Tynnes Falk's ex-wife. Wallander put the message aside, called Irene and told her to hold all incoming calls for a while. He called information and was given the phone number for the American Express office. He started to explain what he wanted and was transferred to someone called Anita. She asked to return his call as a security check. Wallander put down the phone and waited. After a few minutes he remembered that he had asked Irene to hold his calls. He swore and dialled the American Express number. This time they managed to arrange the security callback and Wallander was able to ask for the information he needed.

  "It will take us some time," the girl said.

  "So long as you understand how important it is."

  "We'll do what we can."

  Wallander called the garage. Eventually, the man he had spoken to earlier came on the line and quoted him a price that took his breath away. The car would be ready the following day. It was the parts that were expensive, not the labour. Wallander said he would come and collect the car at noon.

  After he put the receiver down his thoughts wandered. He was in the interrogation room with Höglund. It irritated him that he couldn't be there. She could be a bit soft, wasn't good at applying real pressure. Moreover, Holgersson had not given him the benefit of the doubt, and he wasn't going to forgive her for that.

  To fill the time, he dialled the number of Falk's ex-wife. She answered almost at once.

  "This is Inspector Wallander. Is that Marianne Falk?"

  "I'm so glad you called. I've been waiting for you."

  She had a high, pleasant-sounding voice. She sounded like Mona. Wallander felt a distant, brief pull of emotion. Was it sadness?

  "Has Dr Enander been in touch with you?" she asked.

  "I've talked to him."

  "Then you know that Tynnes did not die of a heart attack."

  "I'm not sure that we can rule out the possibility."

  "Why not? He was attacked."

  Wallander's curiosity was piqued. "You don't sound surprised."

  "I'm not. Tynnes had many enemies."

  Wallander pulled a pen and some paper towards him. He was already wearing his glasses.

  "What kind of enemies?"

  "I don't know. But he was constantly on his guard."

  Wallander searched his memory for the information that had been in Martinsson's report.

  "He was some kind of computer consultant, isn't that right?"

  "Yes."

  "That doesn't sound so dangerous."

  "I think it depends on what you do."

  "And what exactly did he do?"

  "I don't know."

  "But you are convinced that he was attacked?"

  "I knew him well, even if we didn't live together. This past year he was particularly anxious."

  "He never told you why?"

  She hesitated before answering. "I know it sounds strange that I can't be more specific," she said. "Though we were together for a long time and had two children."

  "'Enemy' is a strong word."

  "Tynnes travelled extensively. He always did. I have no idea what sort of people he must have met, but sometimes he came home very excited. At other times when I met him at Sturup airport he would be visibly worried."

  "But he must have said something, like why he had enemies, or who they were?"

  "He was a quiet man, but I could read the anxiety in his face."

  Wallander wondered if the woman wasn't a little highly strung.

  "Was there anything else?"

  "It wasn't a heart attack. I want the police to find out what really happened."

  Wallander thought for a moment before answering.

  "I've made a note of what you've said. We'll be in touch if we need to ask you anything else."

  "I'm counting on you to find out what happened. We were divorced, Tynnes and I, but I still loved him."

  Wallander wondered if Mona would say that she loved him still, though they were divorced and she was married to another man. He doubted it. Then he asked himself if she had ever really loved him. He brushed these thoughts angrily aside and went over what Marianne Falk had told him. Her unease seemed genuine. On the other hand, she had not really said anything concrete. He still didn't have a clear sense of what sort of man Tynnes Falk had been. He looked for Martinsson's report, then called the coroner's office in Lund. All the time he was listening for Höglund's footsteps at his door. The outcome of Persson's interrogation was his primary interest. Falk had died of a heart attack, and that fact wasn't going to be changed by an ex-wife just because she was convinced he had been surrounded by enemies. Wallander telephoned the pathologist who had conducted the autopsy on Falk. He told him about his conversation with Falk's wife.

  "Heart attacks can come, seemingly, out of the blue," the pathologist said. "The autopsy revealed this incontrovertibly as the cause of death. Neither Falk's wife nor what his doctor said change my view in any way."

  "And the head wound?"

  "That was caused by his head hitting the pavement."

  Wallander thanked him and hung up. As he closed Martinsson's report, he had the nagging feeling that he had overlooked something, but he couldn't spend precious time worrying about the products of other people's imagination.

  He poured himself another cup of coffee in the canteen. It was almost 11.30 a.m. Martinsson and Hansson were still out, and no-one knew where they were. Wallander returned to his office. He was impatient and cross. Widén's decision to get away was needling him. It was as if he had ended up in a race he never expected to win, but one in which he didn't want to end up last. It was not a clear thought, but he knew what was bothering him. Time was rushing away from him, that was what he felt.

  "I can't live like this," he said out loud. "Something has to change."

  "Who are you talking to?"

  Wallander looked up. Martinsson was in the doorway. Wallander hadn't heard him come in. No-o
ne at the station moved as quietly as Martinsson.

  "I was talking to myself," Wallander said firmly. "Don't you ever do that?"

  "I talk in my sleep, according to my wife. Maybe that's the same thing."

  "What do you want?"

  "I've checked everyone who had access to the substation keys. Not one of them has a previous record."

  "We didn't really expect them to," Wallander said.

  "I've been trying to puzzle out why the gates were forced," Martinsson said. "I can only think of two possibilities: one, that the key to the gates was missing. Two, someone's trying to throw us off the track."

  "For what reason?"

  "Vandalism, destruction for its own sake, I don't know."

  Wallander shook his head. "The steel door was opened with a key. Maybe the person who forced the gates was not the same person who unlocked the door."

  Martinsson wrinkled his brow. "And how would you explain that?"

  "I can't explain it. I'm only offering you another alternative."

  When Martinsson left, it was noon. Wallander went on waiting. Höglund appeared at 12.12 p.m.

  "One thing you can't accuse that girl of is talking too fast," she said. "I've never met a young person who talked so slowly."

  "Perhaps she's afraid of saying the wrong thing," Wallander said.

  Höglund sat down in his visitor's chair.

  "I asked her what you told me," she said. "But she never saw any Chinese person."

  "I didn't say Chinese, I said Asian."

  "Well, she says she never saw anyone like that. They changed seats because Hökberg complained about a draught from the window."

  "How did she react when you asked her that question?"

  Höglund looked worried. "Just as you would expect. The question took her by surprise and her answer was a pure lie."

  Wallander slammed the desktop. "Then we know," he said. "There's a connection here to the man who came into the restaurant."

  "What connection?"

  "That we don't know. But the killing certainly wasn't a spur-of-the-moment business."

  "I don't know how we're going to get any evidence to prove that."

  Wallander told her about his call to American Express.

  "That will give us a name," he said. "And if we have a name, we will have made progress. While we're waiting for that, I'd like you to visit Persson's home. I want you to look at her bedroom. Where's her father, by the way?"

  Höglund checked her notes. "His name is Hugo Lövström. According to his daughter, he's a homeless drunk. She's filled with hate, that girl. I don't know who she hates the most, her mother or her father."

  "Have they no regular contact?"

  "It doesn't sound like it."

  "We don't see clearly yet," Wallander said. "We have to find the real reasons behind it all. It may be that I'm simply too naive, that young people nowadays – even girls – see nothing wrong with murdering people. In that case I give up. But not just yet. Something must have driven them to do this."

  "Maybe we should come at it from another direction," Höglund said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Shouldn't we be looking more closely at Lundberg?"

  "Why? They couldn't have known who their driver was going to be?"

  "That's true."

  But Wallander saw that she was on to something. He waited.

  "There's just this possibility," she said thoughtfully, "that maybe it was an impulsive act after all. They order a taxi, and then one or both of them recognise Lundberg."

  Wallander saw what she was getting at.

  "You're right," he said. "That is possible."

  "We know the girls are armed," she said. "They have a hammer and a knife. Apparently all young people carry some kind of weapon these days. The girls realise that Lundberg is their driver. Then they kill him. It could have happened like that, even if it seems unlikely."

  "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."