Firewall Page 26

  "If the police need any information one may have, surely it is one's duty to try to be of assistance."

  She's worse than I am, he thought. It's like watching a bad film from the 1930s.

  Slowly they went through what she thought she had seen. Wallander let Hansson do the questioning while he wrote down her answers.

  She had observed a dark van at 11.30 p.m. She was sure of the time because she had just consulted her watch, she said.

  "It's an old habit. It's ingrained in me by now. I always had one client in the chair and a whole waiting room full of others. Time always went too fast."

  Hansson tried to get her to pinpoint the kind of van it had been. He had brought with him a folder he had assembled a few years ago. It had pictures of different models of cars, as well as a colour chart. Naturally there were all kinds of computer programs for this now, but Hansson, like Wallander, had trouble adjusting his work habits.

  They concluded it had possibly been a Mercedes. Either navy blue or black. She hadn't noticed the number plate, nor had she seen whether there was anyone in the van or not. But she had seen a shadowy figure behind the van.

  "Well, I wasn't the one who saw him," she explained. "It was Steadfast, my dog. He pricked up his ears and strained in that direction."

  "I know it may be hard to describe what you saw," Hansson said. "But I'd like you to try. Was it a man or a woman?"

  She thought for a long time before answering. "I think it was a man," she said finally.

  "What happened after that?"

  "I took my usual walk."

  Hansson spread a map on the table. She told him her route.

  "That means you passed by the cash machine on your way back. Was the van gone then?"

  "Yes."

  "What time would that have been?"

  "About 12.10 a.m."

  "And how do you know that?"

  "I came home at 12.25 a.m. It takes me 15 minutes to walk home from that spot."

  She showed him on the map where she lived. Wallander and Hansson agreed with her. It would take about that long.

  "But you didn't see anything in that area when you walked home?" Hansson said. "And your dog didn't react in any way?"

  "No."

  "Isn't that surprising?" Hansson said to Wallander.

  "The body must have been stored at a low temperature," Wallander said. "It wouldn't have had a smell. We can ask Nyberg, or one of the dog units."

  "I'm very glad I didn't see anything," Alma Högström said firmly. "It's terrible even to imagine it. People delivering dead bodies in the middle of the night."

  "Did you know that this man you normally saw during your evening walks was called Falk?" Wallander said.

  Her answer came as a surprise. "He was my patient once upon a time. He had good teeth. I only saw him a couple of times, but I have a good memory for faces and names."

  "He often took walks at night?" Hansson said.

  "I used to meet him several times a week. He was always alone. I said hello sometimes, but he didn't seem to want to be disturbed."

  Hansson looked over at Wallander who nodded.

  "We may be in touch if we need anything else," he said. "If you think of anything else in the meantime we would of course like to hear from you."

  Hansson followed her out. Wallander remained where he was. He thought about what she had told them. Nothing had emerged that helped them make more sense out of this case.

  Hansson came back and picked up his folders. "A black or navy blue Mercedes van," he said. "We should look into cars that have been stolen recently."

  Wallander nodded. "And talk to one of the dog units about the question of smell. At least we have a fixed time. That counts for a lot at this stage."

  Wallander returned to his office. It was 11.45 a.m. He called Martinsson and told him what had happened during the night. Martinsson listened without saying a word. It irritated Wallander but he managed to control himself. He told Martinsson that a patrol car was going to collect Modin. Wallander said he would see him in reception and give him the keys to the flat.

  "Maybe I'll learn something," Martinsson said when he saw him. "Watching a real master climb the firewalls."

  "I assure you the responsibility is still all mine," Wallander said. "But I don't want him left alone."

  Martinsson noticed Wallander's gentle irony, and immediately became defensive.

  "We can't all be like you," he said. "Some of us actually take police regulations seriously."

  "I know," Wallander said patiently. "And you're right of course. But I'm still not going to the prosecutor or Lisa for permission on this."

  Martinsson disappeared out through the front doors.

  Wallander felt hungry. He walked into town and had lunch at István's pizzeria. István was very busy. They never had a chance to talk about Fu Cheng and his fake credit card. On the way back to the station Wallander posted his letter to the dating agency. He remained convinced that he would not get a single reply.

  The phone was ringing as he reached his office. It was Nyberg. Wallander went back into the corridor. Nyberg's office was on the floor below. When Wallander got there, he saw lying, in plastic bags, on Nyberg's desk, the hammer and the knife that had been used in Lundberg's murder.

  "As of today I've been a policeman for 40 years," Nyberg said grumpily when he came in. "I started on a Monday but of course my meaningless anniversary has to fall on a Sunday."

  "If you're so sick of your job, you should just quit," Wallander said.

  He was surprised that he lost his temper. He had never done such a thing with Nyberg. In fact, he always tried to be as tactful as possible around his irascible colleague. But Nyberg didn't seem to take offence. He looked at Wallander, curious.

  "Well, well," he said. "I thought I was the only one around here with a temper."

  "Forget it. I didn't mean it," Wallander mumbled.

  That made Nyberg angry. "Of course you meant it. That's the whole point. I don't know why people have to be so afraid of showing a little temperament. And anyway, you're right. I'm just bitching."

  "Maybe that's what we're all reduced to in the end," Wallander said.

  Nyberg pulled the plastic bag with the knife impatiently towards him.

  "The results of the fingerprinting have come back," he said. "There are two different sets on this knife."

  Wallander leaned in attentively.

  "Persson and Hökberg?"

  "Exactly."

  "So Persson may not be lying in this particular case?"

  "It seems it's at least a possibility."

  "That Hökberg is responsible for the murder, you mean?"

  "I'm not implying anything. That's not my job. I'm just telling you the facts. It's a legitimate possibility, that's all."

  "What about the hammer?"

  "Only Hökberg's prints. No-one else's."

  Wallander nodded. "That's good to know."

  "We know more than that," Nyberg said, leafing through the papers strewn across his desk. "Sometimes the pathologists exceed even their own expectations. They have determined that the blows were inflicted in stages. First he was hit with the hammer, then with the knife."

  "Definitely not the other way around?"

  "No. And not at the same time."

  "How on earth can they know that?"

  "I can only tell you the approximate answer to that, and it's hard to explain."

  "Does this mean Hökberg switched weapons in the course of her attack?"

  "I believe so. Persson had the knife in her bag, but she gave it to Hökberg when asked."

  "Like an operation," Wallander said with a shudder. "The surgeon asking for tools."

  They thought about this for a moment. Nyberg broke the silence.

  "There was one more thing. I've been thinking about that bag out at the power substation. It was lying in the wrong place."

  Wallander waited for him to continue. Nyberg was an excellent and thorough forensic techni
cian, but he could also sometimes demonstrate unexpected investigative skills.

  "I went out there," he said, "and I took the bag with me. I tried throwing it to the spot by the fence where it was found, but I couldn't throw it that far."

  "How so?"

  "You remember what the place looks like. There are towers, poles, high-voltage lines and barbed wire everywhere. The bag always got stuck on something."

  "That means someone must have carried it over there?"

  "Maybe. But the question then is why?"

  "Do you have an idea?"

  "The obvious explanation would be that the bag was put there deliberately because someone wanted it to be found – but maybe they didn't want it to be found right away."

  "Someone wanted the body to be identified, but not immediately?"

  "Yes, that's what I was thinking. But then I discovered something else. The place where the bag was found is in the direct beam of one of the spotlights."

  Wallander sensed where Nyberg was going, but said nothing.

  "I'm simply wondering now if the bag was there because someone had been rifling through it, looking for something."

  "And maybe found something?"

  "That's what I think, but it's your job to work these things out."

  Wallander got up. "Good work," he said. "You may have hit on something."

  Wallander went back up the stairs and stopped at Höglund's office. She was bent over a stack of papers.

  "I want you to contact Hökberg's mother," he said. "Find out what the girl usually had in her bag."

  He told her about Nyberg's idea. He didn't bother to wait while she made the call. He felt restless and started back to his office. He wondered how many miles he had covered walking to and fro in these corridors all these years. He heard the phone in his office and hurried over. It was Martinsson.

  "I think it's time for you to come down here," he said.

  "Why?"

  "Robert Modin is a proficient young man."

  "What's happened?"

  "Exactly what we were hoping for. We're in. The computer has opened its doors."

  Wallander hung up. It's finally happened, he thought. It's taken some time, but we finally did it.

  He took his coat and left the station.

  It was 1.45 p.m. on Sunday, October 12.

  PART 2

  The Firewall

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Carter woke up at dawn because the air-conditioning unit suddenly stopped. He lay listening to the darkness, frozen between the sheets. There was the steady drone of cicadas and a dog barked in the distance. The power had gone out again. That happened every other night in Luanda. Savimbi's bandits were always looking for ways to cut the power to the city. In a few minutes the room would be stifling hot, but he didn't know if he had the energy to go down to the room past the kitchen and start up the generator. He didn't know what was worse: the insufferable heat or the throbbing of the generator.

  He turned and looked at the time. It was 5.15 a.m. He heard one of the guards outside, snoring. That was probably Jose. As long as Roberto kept himself awake it didn't matter. He shifted his head and felt for the muzzle of his gun under the pillow. When it came down to it, beyond the guards and the fences, this was his real protection against the burglars hiding in the dark. He understood them, of course. He was a white man, he was wealthy. In a poor and downtrodden country like Angola, crime was a given. If he had been one of the poor, he would have robbed people himself.

  As suddenly as it had stopped, the air conditioning started up again. That meant it wasn't the work of bandits, it was simply a technical glitch. The power lines were old, left over from the Portuguese colonial times. How many years ago that was, he could no longer remember.

  Carter had trouble getting back to sleep. He thought about the fact that he was about to turn 60. In many ways it was a miracle that he had reached this age, given his unpredictable and dangerous way of life.

  He pushed away the sheet and let the cool air touch his skin. He didn't like to wake up at dawn. He was most vulnerable during the hours before sunrise, left to the dark and his memories. He could get worked up over old wrongs that had been done to him. It was only when he focused on the revenge he was planning that he could calm himself. By then several hours might have passed. The sun would be up, the guards would have started talking and Celine would be unlocking the door to the kitchen to come in and make his breakfast.

  He pulled the sheet back over his body. His nose started to itch and he knew he was about to sneeze. He hated to sneeze. He hated his allergies. They were a weakness he despised. The sneezing could come at any time. Sometimes they interrupted him in the middle of a lecture and made it impossible for him to continue. Other times he broke out in hives. Or else his eyes kept filling with tears. He pulled the sheet all the way up and over his mouth. This time he won. The need to sneeze died away. He thought about all the years that had gone by and all that had occurred which had led to his lying in a bed in Luanda, capital of Angola.

  Thirty years ago he had been a young man working at the World Bank in Washington, DC. He had been convinced that the bank had the potential to do good in the world, or at the very least shift the balance of justice in the Third World's favour. The World Bank had been founded to provide the huge loans needed in the poverty-stricken parts of the world and which exceeded the capacity of individual nations and banks to provide. Many of his friends at the University of California had told him that he was wrong, that no reasonable solutions to the economic inequality of the world were addressed at the World Bank, but he had maintained his beliefs. At heart he was no less radical than they. He too marched in the anti-war demonstrations. But he had never believed in the potential of civil disobedience to reshape the world. Nor did he believe in the small and squabbling socialist organisations. He had come to the conclusion that the world had to be changed from within existing social structures. If you were going to try to shift the balance of power, you had to stay close to its source.

  He had, however, a secret. It was what had made him leave Columbia and go to university in California. He had been in Vietnam for one year, and he had liked it. He had been stationed close to An Khe most of the time, along the important route west from Qui Nhon. He knew he killed many soldiers during that year and that he had never felt remorse over this. While his buddies had turned to drugs for solace, he had maintained a disciplined approach to his work. He knew he was going to survive the war, that he would not be one of the bodies sent home in a plastic bag. And it was then, during the stifling nights patrolling the jungle, that he had arrived at his conviction that you had to stay close to the source of power in order to affect it. Now, as he lay in the damp heat of the Angolan nights, he sometimes experienced the feeling that he was back in the jungle. He knew he had been right.

  He had understood that there was going to be an opening at the executive level in Angola and he had immediately learned Portuguese. His career climb had been meteoric. His bosses had seen his potential, although there were others with more experience who applied for the same post. He had been appointed to a desirable post with little or no discussion.