Firewall Page 3

  Wallander opened the folder with a sigh. Martinsson had written a concise report of the events. Wallander leaned back in his chair and thought about what he had just read.

  Two girls, one 19, the other not more than 14, had ordered a taxi from a restaurant at about 10 p.m. on Tuesday. They had asked to be driven to Rydsgård. One was in the passenger seat. As they reached the outskirts of Ystad she asked the driver to stop, saying she wanted to move to the back seat. When the taxi pulled over to the side of the road, the girl in the back hit the driver on the head with a hammer. The girl in the passenger seat stabbed him in the chest with a knife. They took the driver's wallet and his mobile and left. The driver was able to make an emergency call on the taxi radio despite his condition.

  His name was Johan Lundberg and he was about 60 years old. He had been a taxi driver almost all his adult life. He had given good descriptions of both girls. Martinsson had been able to get their names by using these descriptions while interviewing other people who had been in the restaurant.

  The girls had been arrested in their homes. Both were now in custody despite their age, because of the enormity of the crime and the violence involved. Lundberg had been conscious when admitted at the hospital, but his condition had deteriorated. He was now unconscious, and the doctors were unsure of the prognosis. As a motive for the crime, Martinsson reported, the girls had offered only the explanation that they "needed money".

  Wallander made a face. He had never known anything like it – two girls responsible for an act of such pointless brutality. According to Martinsson's notes, the younger girl had excellent grades at school. The older one was a hotel receptionist and had earlier worked as a nanny in London. She had applied for a place on a foreign-language course at the university. Neither had been in trouble before.

  I just don't get it, Wallander thought. This total lack of respect for human life. They could have killed that taxi driver, and it may even turn out that way. Two girls. If they had been boys I could maybe understand, if only because by now I'm used to it.

  He was interrupted by a knock on the door. His colleague Ann-Britt Höglund was in the doorway. As usual she looked pale and tired. Wallander thought about the change in her life since she first came to Ystad. She had been one of the best in her class at Police Training College and had arrived with a great deal of energy and ambition. Today she still possessed a strong will, but she was changed. The paleness in her face came from within.

  "Do you want me to come back later?" she said.

  "No, not at all."

  She sat down gingerly in the rickety chair opposite him. Wallander pointed to the papers in front of him. "Do you have anything to say about this?" he asked.

  "Is it the taxi driver case?"

  "Yes."

  "I've talked to the older girl, Hökberg. She gave me clear and strong answers, answered everything. And seemed to have not a trace of remorse. The other girl has been in custody with the social welfare people because of her age."

  "Can you understand it?"

  Höglund paused before answering. "Yes and no. We know that crime has spread down to the ranks of the very young."

  "Forgive me, but I don't recall a case of two teenage girls attacking anyone with a knife and a hammer. Were they drunk?"

  "No. But I don't know if that should surprise us. Maybe the surprise is that something like this didn't happen sooner."

  Wallander leaned over the desk. "You'll have to run that last part by me again."

  "I don't know if I can explain it."

  "Give it a try."

  "Women aren't needed in the workforce any more. That era is over."

  "But that doesn't explain why a young girl would assault a taxi driver."

  "There has to be something more to it than we know. Neither you nor I believe that people are born evil."

  Wallander shook his head. "I cling to that belief," he said, "though at times it's a challenge."

  "Just look at the magazines young girls are reading. Now it's all about beauty again, nothing else. How to get a boyfriend and find meaning for life through his interests and dreams, that sort of thing."

  "Wasn't that what they were always about?"

  "No. Think of your own daughter. Didn't she have her own ideas about what to do with her life?"

  Wallander knew that she was right. "Yes, but that doesn't get me to the point of knowing why they attacked Lundberg," he said.

  "But you should know. Young girls are slowly starting to see through the messages society sends them. When they work out they aren't needed, that in fact they're superfluous, they react just as viciously as boys. And go on to commit crimes, among other things."

  Wallander was quiet. He now understood the point Höglund had been trying to make.

  "I don't think I can explain it any better," she said. "Shouldn't you talk to them yourself?"

  "Martinsson has suggested it."

  "Actually, I stopped by for another reason. Something I need your help on."

  Wallander waited for her to continue.

  "I said I'd give a talk to a women's club in Ystad. The meeting is on Thursday evening, but I don't feel up to it any more. There's too much going on in my life, and I can't seem to focus."

  Wallander knew that she was in the throes of agonising divorce proceedings. Her husband was constantly away due to his work as an engineer. He was sent all over the world, and that meant that the process was dragging on. It was more than a year since she had first told Wallander about the marriage ending.

  "Why don't you see if Martinsson would do it?" Wallander said. "You know I'm hopeless at lectures."

  "You only have to tell them what it's like to be a police officer," she said. "And you'd only need to speak for half an hour to an audience of 30 or so women. Probably there will be questions too. They'll love you."

  Wallander shook his head firmly. "Martinsson will be more than happy to do it," he said. "And he has experience in politics so he's used to this kind of thing."

  "I already asked him. He can't."

  "Holgersson?"

  "The same. There's only you."

  "What about Hansson?"

  "He'd start talking about horse racing after a few minutes. He's hopeless."

  Wallander saw that he would have to give in. He couldn't leave her in the lurch. "What kind of women's club?"

  "It started as a book club, I think, which has grown into a society for intellectual and literary activity. They've been active for about ten years."

  "Well, I don't want to do it but, since you're stuck, I will."

  She was clearly relieved and gave him a piece of paper. "Here's the name and number of the contact person." The address was in the middle of town, not far from where he lived. Höglund got to her feet.

  "They won't pay you anything," she said. "But you'll get plenty of coffee and cake."

  "I don't eat cake."

  "If it's any help, this kind of public service is exactly what the chief constable wants us to be doing. You know how we're always getting those memoranda about finding new ways of reaching out to the community."

  Wallander thought of asking her how she was getting on in her personal life, but he let it pass. If she had a problem she wanted to discuss with him, she would be the one to bring it up.

  "Weren't you going to go to Stefan Fredman's funeral?"

  "I was just there, and it was exactly as depressing as you might imagine."

  "How is the mother taking it? I can't remember her name."

  "Anette. She's certainly been dealt a bum hand in life. But I think she's taking good care of the one child she has left. Or is trying to, at any rate."

  "We'll have to wait and see."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "What's the boy's name?"

  "Jens."

  "We'll have to wait and see if the name Jens Fredman starts popping up in our police reports in about ten years' time."

  Wallander nodded. There was certainly that possibility.
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  Höglund left and Wallander went to fetch a fresh cup of coffee. The young officers were gone. Wallander walked to Martinsson's office. The door was wide open, but the room was empty. Wallander returned to his office. His headache was gone. He looked out of the window. Some blackbirds were screeching over by the water tower. He tried to count them, but there were too many.

  The phone rang and he answered without sitting down at his desk. It was someone calling from the bookshop to let him know that the book he had ordered had come in. Wallander couldn't recall ordering a book, but said that he'd call in to pick it up the following day.

  He remembered what the book was as soon as he put the receiver down. It was a present for Linda. A French book on restoring antique furniture. Wallander had read about it in a magazine at the doctor's surgery. He was still hoping that Linda would return to her idea of restoring furniture for a living, despite her subsequent experimentation with other careers. He had ordered the book and promptly forgotten about it. He pushed his coffee cup aside and decided to call her later that evening. It had been several weeks since they had talked.

  Martinsson walked in. He was always in a hurry and seldom knocked. Over the years, Wallander had become steadily more convinced of Martinsson's abilities as a police officer. His chief weakness was that he would probably rather be doing something else. There had been times when he had seriously considered quitting, the worst one of which was set off by his daughter being attacked at school. The offenders maintained that it was for no other reason than that she was the daughter of a policeman. That had been enough to push him over the edge. But Wallander had eventually been able to talk him out of it. Martinsson's greatest strengths were that he was both stubborn and sharp. His stubbornness was sometimes overtaken by a certain impatience and then his sharp wits were not enough. Occasionally he turned in sloppy background work.

  Martinsson leaned against the door frame. "I tried to ring you," he said, "but your mobile was turned off."

  "I was in church," Wallander said. "I forgot to turn it on again."

  "At Stefan's funeral?"

  Wallander told Martinsson what he had told Höglund, that it was as grim as he could have imagined.

  Martinsson gestured to the file on his table.

  "I've read it," Wallander said. "And I still can't fathom what drove these girls to take a hammer and a knife and assault someone – anyone – like that."

  "It says it right there," Martinsson said. "They needed the money."

  "But why such violence? How is he, anyway?"

  "Lundberg?"

  "Who else?"

  "He's still unconscious and on the critical list. They promised to call if there was any change. It doesn't look so good, though."

  "Do you understand any of this?"

  Martinsson sat down. "No," he said, "I certainly don't. And I'm not sure I want to."

  "But we have to. If we're going to do our jobs, that is."

  Martinsson looked at Wallander. "You know I've often thought about quitting. Last time you managed to talk me out of it. Next time it won't be as easy."

  Wallander was worried. He didn't want to lose Martinsson as a colleague, any more than he wanted to see Höglund turn up in his office with her resignation. "Maybe we should go and talk to this Hökberg girl," he said.

  "There's one more thing."

  Wallander sat back in his chair. Martinsson had some papers in his hand.

  "I want you to look at this. It happened last night. I was on duty and saw no reason to get you out of bed."

  "Tell me."

  Martinsson scratched his forehead. "A night patrolman called in at around 1 a.m., saying that there was a man lying dead in front of one of the cash machines outside a department store in the town."

  "Which one?"

  "The one next to the Inland Revenue."

  Wallander nodded in recognition.

  "We drove down to check it out. According to the doctor the man hadn't been dead long, a couple of hours at the outside. We'll have the autopsy report in a few days, of course."

  "What had happened?"

  "That's the question. He had an ugly wound on his head, but whether somebody hit him or whether he injured himself when falling to the ground, we couldn't tell."

  "Had he been mugged?"

  "His wallet was still there, with money in it."

  Wallander thought for a moment. "No-one saw anything?"

  "No."

  "Who was he?"

  Martinsson looked in his papers. "Name of Tynnes Falk. 47 years old and living nearby. He was renting the top-floor flat at 10 Apelbergsgatan."

  Wallander raised his hand. "10 Apelbergsgatan?"

  "That's right."

  Wallander nodded slowly. A couple of years ago, soon after his divorce from Mona, he had met a woman during a night of dancing at the Hotel Saltsjöbaden. Wallander had been very drunk. He had gone home with her and woken up the next morning in a strange bed next to a woman he hardly recognised, whose name he couldn't remember. He had thrown his clothes on and left and never saw her again. For some reason, he was sure she had lived at 10 Apelbergsgatan.

  "Do you recognise the address?" Martinsson said.

  "I just didn't hear you."

  Martinsson looked at him with surprise. "Was I mumbling?"

  "Please go on."

  "He was single, divorced actually. His ex-wife still lives here, but their children are all over the place. A boy of 19 is studying in Stockholm. The girl is 17 and works as a nanny at an embassy in Paris. The ex-wife has been notified."

  "Where did he work?"

  "He seems to have worked for himself. Some kind of computer consultant."

  "And he wasn't robbed?"

  "No, but he had just rung up his account balance at the cash machine before he died. He still had the slip in his hand when we found him."

  "And he hadn't taken out any money?"

  "The records say not."

  "Strange. The most reasonable thing would be to assume that someone was waiting for him to withdraw money and then strike when he had the cash."

  "That occurred to me as well, of course, but the last time he made a withdrawal was on Saturday, and that wasn't even a large sum of money."

  Martinsson handed Wallander a plastic bag with a blood-spattered bank receipt. The time on it said 12.02 a.m. He handed it back to Martinsson.

  "What does Nyberg say?"