Firewall Page 32

  "So the house is empty?" Höglund said.

  "There's no-one there."

  "When was it the taxi came?"

  "Last Wednesday. In the afternoon."

  Höglund imagined Yngve sitting in his kitchen with a log of his neighbours' comings and goings and activities in front of him. I suppose it's not unlike watching trains, she thought.

  "Do you remember what taxi company it was?" she asked.

  "No."

  You know perfectly well what company it was, she thought. You may even remember the make of the car and have written down the number plate. But you're not going to tell me because you don't want to admit what I've already found out. That you spy on your neighbours.

  "I'd be grateful if you would get in touch with us when he turns up again."

  "What's he done?"

  "Nothing. We just need to ask him a few questions."

  "What about?"

  His curiosity knew no bounds. She shook her head and he didn't ask again, but she could tell that he was irritated. It was as if she had breached some unspoken etiquette.

  Höglund returned to the station and was lucky enough quickly to find the right taxi company and the driver who had picked up Landahl on Snappehanegatan. The driver came to the police station. His name was Östensson and he was in his thirties.

  She asked him about his passenger and he turned out to have a good memory.

  "I picked him up just before 2 p.m. I think his name was Jonas."

  "Did he give a last name?"

  "I think I thought it was a last name. Nowadays people have such strange names."

  "And there was only one passenger?"

  "Yes. A young man. He was friendly."

  "Did he have much luggage?"

  "Just one small case on wheels."

  "Where did you take him?"

  "To the ferry terminal."

  "Was he going to Poland?"

  "Is there any other destination?"

  "What was your impression of him?"

  "I didn't have one, really, but he was nice enough."

  "Did he seem anxious?"

  "No."

  "Did he talk?"

  "He sat in the back seat and looked out of the window, as far as I remember. But he gave me a tip. I remember that."

  Höglund thanked him for his trouble. She decided to get a warrant to search the house on Snappehanegatan. She spoke to the state prosecutor, who sent over the paperwork she needed. She was just on her way over to the house when the day-care centre called to say that her youngest child was not well, was in fact vomiting. She drove over and took the child home, spending the next couple of hours there, until the child seemed better and her godsend of a neighbour, who often jumped in and helped her in times of need, was available to look after the little one. Now she was back at the station, and Wallander was there too.

  "Do we have keys?" he said.

  "I thought we would bring a locksmith with us."

  "No need. Did the locks look complicated in any way?"

  "No, not really."

  "Then I'll take care of them myself."

  "Just remember that a man in a dressing gown and green boots will be watching us from his kitchen window."

  "You'll have to keep him busy, maybe sweet-talk him. Tell him his watchfulness has been a great help and that we would be grateful if he would take special notice of the comings and goings on his street for the next few days. And of course keep everything he finds out to himself. If there's one curious neighbour there could be more."

  Höglund laughed. "He's just the type to fall for it," she said.

  They drove to Snappehanegatan in her car. As usual he thought she drove too fast and made unnecessarily brusque movements. He was going to tell her about the photograph album, but he couldn't concentrate on anything but his prayers that they would not run into another car.

  Wallander walked up to the front door while Höglund went over to the house belonging to the man called Yngve. Just as she had described, he too was struck by a feeling of desolation as he regarded the house. He was about to get the doors open when she returned.

  "The dressing-gown man is now part of our undercover team," she said.

  "I take it you didn't say we wanted the boy in connection with Hökberg?"

  "Who do you take me for?"

  "A talented policewoman, of course."

  Wallander got the doors open and shut them once they were inside.

  "Is anyone here?" Wallander shouted.

  The words seemed to be swallowed up by the silence.

  They worked their way slowly and deliberately through the house. It was a model of cleanliness and order. Everything in its place, nothing to suggest a hurried departure. There was something almost impersonal about the rooms, as if the furniture had all been bought at the same time and put there only to make the rooms occupied. There was a photograph of a young couple with a newborn baby on the mantelpiece. There was a bare minimum of personal items. An answering machine with a button blinking stood on a table. Wallander pressed it and the messages came on. A computer company reported that his new modem was in. Then there was a wrong number, no message, no name. Then there came the message Wallander had been hoping for. Wallander recognised it immediately, although it took Höglund a few seconds to process it. It was Sonja Hökberg's voice: I'll call you again. It's important. I'll call you.

  Wallander found the button that saved the message. They played it again.

  "So now we know," he said. "Sonja was in touch with the boy who lived here. She didn't even say her name."

  "Is this the call we've been looking for? When she escaped?"

  "Probably."

  Wallander went out into the kitchen, through the laundry room and opened the door to the garage. There was a car. A dark blue VW Golf.

  "Call Nyberg," Wallander said. "I want that car gone over with a fine-tooth comb."

  "Do you think it's the one that delivered her to her death?"

  "It could be. We can't rule that out at any rate."

  Höglund got out her phone and started the process of tracking down Nyberg. Wallander used the time to take a look around the second floor. There were four bedrooms, but only two of them, from a swift reconnaissance, looked as though they were lived in. One for the parents, one for the boy. Wallander opened the wardrobe in the parents' room and looked at the clothes hanging in neat rows. He heard Höglund coming up the stairs.

  "Nyberg is on his way."

  Then she too looked at the clothes. "They have good taste," she said. "And plenty of money, you can tell."

  Wallander found a dog's collar and a short leather whip right at the back of the wardrobe.

  "Perhaps their tastes run a little to the alternative side," he said thoughtfully.

  "It's the in-thing nowadays," Höglund said knowingly. "People think you screw better if you pull a plastic bag over your head and flirt with death."

  Her choice of words startled and embarrassed Wallander, but he said nothing.

  They continued into the boy's room. It was unexpectedly spartan. There was nothing on the walls or on the bed. There was a computer on a large desk.

  "I'll ask Martinsson to take a look at this," Wallander said.

  "Do you want me to start it up for you?"

  "No, let's hold off."

  They went back downstairs. Wallander searched through the slips of paper stuffed into a kitchen drawer until he found what he was looking for.

  "I don't know if you noticed this or not," he said, "but there was no name on the front door. That's a little unusual. But here at least is some junk mail addressed to Harald Landahl, Jonas's father."

  "Are we going to put out a search for him? I mean the boy."

  "Not just yet. We need a little more information first."

  "Was he the one who killed her?"

  "We don't know. But his departure can be interpreted as an attempt to flee."

  They went through more drawers while they waited for Nyberg. Hö
glund found a number of photographs of what looked to be a newly built house somewhere, probably in the Mediterranean.

  "Is that where they keep going?"

  "It's not impossible."

  "Where do they get their money?"

  "The son is still the main focus of our investigation."

  The doorbell rang. It was Nyberg and two of his team of technicians. Wallander led them out to the garage.

  "Concentrate on fingerprints," he said. "They might correspond with some we've found in other places. On Sonja Hökberg's handbag, for example. Or in the office. Also look for signs placing the car at the power substation. Or that Hökberg has been in it."

  "In that case we'll start with the tyres," Nyberg said. "That will be the fastest. You remember we had one set of tyre marks out there we couldn't account for."

  Wallander waited and it only took Nyberg ten minutes to give him the answer he had been hoping for.

  "This is the car," Nyberg said after having compared the tread with pictures taken of the crime scene.

  "Are you sure?"

  "Of course not. There are thousands of tyres out there that are almost identical. But if you look at this back left tyre you'll see that it's low on air and is also worn on the inside since the tyres haven't been balanced properly. That dramatically increases our chances of being right."

  "So you are sure."

  "As sure as I can be without being 100 per cent certain."

  Wallander left the garage. Höglund was busy in the living room. He went to the kitchen. Am I doing the right thing? he thought. Should I send out a description of him right now? A sudden sense of anxiety drove him back upstairs to the boy's bedroom. He sat at the desk and looked around. Then he got up and went over to the wardrobe. There was nothing that caught his eye. He stood on tiptoe and felt around on the upper shelves. Nothing. He returned to the desk and looked at the computer. On an impulse, he lifted the keyboard, but there was nothing underneath. He paused before going to the top of the stairs and calling out to Höglund. They went back into the boy's bedroom together and Wallander pointed to the computer.

  "Do you want me to start it up for you?"

  "Yes."

  "So we're not waiting for Martinsson?"

  There was no attempt to conceal the tone of irony in her voice. Perhaps she had been hurt by his earlier insistence that they wait for their colleague. But right now he didn't have time to think about that. How many times had he felt overlooked or humiliated during his years as a policeman? By other police officers, criminals, prosecutors and journalists, and not least by those who were usually referred to as "members of the public".

  Höglund sat down and switched on the computer. It made a little noise and the screen slowly came to life. She clicked open the hard drive and various icons emerged.

  "What is it you want me to look for?"

  "I don't know."

  She chose an icon at random and double-clicked on it. In contrast to Falk's computer this one didn't put up any resistance. It dutifully opened the file, the only problem being that the file was completely empty.

  Wallander put on his glasses and leaned over her shoulder.

  "Try the one called 'Correspondence'," he said.

  She clicked on the icon, but the same thing happened. There was nothing there.

  "What does it mean?" he said.

  "That it's empty."

  "Or that it has been emptied. Keep going."

  She tried file after file but kept getting the same result.

  "It's strange," she said. "There really isn't anything here at all."

  Wallander looked around to see if he could find any diskettes. But he couldn't find a single one.

  Höglund proceeded to the file that held the information about computer activity.

  "The last activity occurred on October 9."

  "That was last Thursday."

  They looked questioningly at each other.

  "The day after he went to Poland?"

  "If the neighbourhood spy is to be believed, which I think he is, and the taxi driver too."

  Wallander sat down.

  "Explain it to me."

  "Well, as far as I can see that leaves us with two possibilities. Either he came back. Or someone else has been here."

  "And the person who was here could have emptied the computer?"

  "Quite easily, considering there was no password and no security barriers."

  Wallander tried to draw on the little computer knowledge he had managed to absorb. "Could this person also have removed any trace of such a barrier?"

  "Yes, if they had already bypassed it themselves."

  "And then emptied the computer at the same time?"

  "There would always be prints left behind," she said thoughtfully.

  "What do you mean?"

  "It's something Martinsson explained to me."

  "Tell me."

  "You can try to understand it by comparing a computer to a house that has been emptied of its furniture. There are always a few traces left behind. There might be scratches on the hardwood floors, or perhaps there are patches of light and dark left from where the furniture once was."

  "Like a wall after the paintings have been taken down," Wallander said. "Lighter patches where they used to be."

  "Martinsson used the example of a cellar. Somewhere deep inside the computer there's a space where everything that is supposed to be erased continues to live on. That means that until a hard drive has been destroyed, it is theoretically possible to reconstruct everything that was once on it."

  Wallander shook his head.

  "I understand what you're saying, though I don't understand how it would be possible," he said. "But what interests me most right now is the fact that someone used the computer on October 9."

  Höglund turned back to the monitor.

  "Let me just check the games that are on here," she said and started double-clicking on the icons she hadn't yet touched.

  "That's funny," she said. "I've never heard of this game, 'Jacob's Marsh'."

  When she finished she turned off the computer.