Firewall Read online

  "No ordinary burglar. It was someone very skilled with computers."

  "I haven't even been able to think that far" she said. "I'm too distraught."

  "That's understandable. What was your password?"

  "'Cookie' – it was my nickname as a child."

  "Did anyone else know it?"

  "No."

  "Not even Falk?"

  "No."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes."

  "Was it written down anywhere?" No.

  "Are you sure?"

  She paused before she replied. "Yes."

  Wallander sensed that they were honing in on a crucial point. He advanced carefully. "Did anyone else know about this nickname?"

  "My mother, of course, but she's basically senile."

  "No-one else?"

  "I have a friend who lives in Austria. She knows it."

  "Do you exchange letters with her?"

  "Yes. But the past few years it's been mainly e-mail."

  "Do you sign those with your nickname?"

  "Yes."

  Wallander sat back and took a minute to think.

  "I don't know how this works," he said, "but I suppose those letters are stored in your computer."

  "Yes."

  "So if someone accessed them they would have been able to see your nickname, and perhaps guessed it might have been used as a password."

  "That's impossible. They would need the password up front to gain access to my letters."

  "But someone did manage to break into your computer and delete your files," Wallander said.

  She shook her head obstinately. "Why would anyone do that?"

  "You're the only person who can answer that question. It's a crucial question, as I hope you realise. What did you have in your computer that someone must have wanted?"

  "I never worked with classified information."

  "This is very important. You have to think carefully."

  "You don't have to remind me."

  Wallander waited. She looked as though she were thinking hard.

  "There was nothing," she said finally.

  "Perhaps there was something there that you didn't realise was valuable?"

  "And what would that have been?"

  "Again, only you can tell me."

  Her voice was firm when she answered him. "I pride myself on keeping all areas of my life, particularly my work, in meticulous order," she said. "I am forever cleaning and sorting files. And I never worked on especially advanced projects, as I told you."

  Wallander also thought hard before proceeding. "Did Falk ever come over and use your computer?"

  "Why would he do that?"

  "I have to ask. Could he have come here without your knowledge? He had keys to your flat."

  "I would have noticed it. It's hard to explain without getting too technical."

  "I see. But Falk was very good at these things. Isn't it possible that he could have erased all trace of what he had done? It's so often a question of who is better at staying one step ahead – the intruder or the investigator."

  "I can't see what would be the point of his using my computer."

  "Perhaps he wanted to hide something. The cuckoo hides his eggs in other birds' nests."

  "But why?"

  "We don't know why. It may also simply be that someone thought he had hidden something here. And now that Falk is dead they need to make sure there isn't something here that you would eventually discover."

  "Who are these people?"

  "That's what I want to know."

  This is what must have happened, Wallander thought. There is no other reasonable explanation. There's a lot of frenetic cleaning going on around this town. Something needs to be kept secret at all costs.

  He repeated the words in his head. Something needs to be kept secret at all costs. That was the case in a nutshell. If they could find the secret, the case would solve itself.

  Wallander sensed that he was running out of time.

  "Did Falk ever talk of the number 20?" he asked.

  "Why? Is that important?"

  "Just answer the question, please."

  "Not as far as I remember."

  Wallander got out his mobile and called Nyberg. There was no answer. He called Irene and asked her to find him.

  "I'll be sending over a forensic team," he said. "I'd be grateful if you could not touch anything in your study. They might find some fingerprints."

  Eriksson escorted him to the door. "I don't know what I'm going to do," she said desperately. "Everything is gone. My whole career has vanished overnight."

  Wallander didn't know how to comfort her. He recalled Erik Hökberg's words about society's vulnerability.

  "Was Falk a religious man?" he said.

  Her surprise was genuine. "He never said anything to suggest such a thing."

  Wallander promised to be in touch. When he came down to the street he was at a loss. The person he most needed to talk to was Martinsson, but the question was: should he take Höglund's advice? He wanted to confront him with what she had told him. Then he was smitten by fatigue. The betrayal was so hurtful and unexpected. He still hardly accepted it, but deep down he knew it must be true.

  Since it was still early, he decided to wait. Perhaps his anger would subside over the course of the day. First he would go back to the Hökbergs. Then he remembered something that he had forgotten to do. He stopped outside the video shop that had been closed when he came here last. He was going to rent the film with Al Pacino that he wanted to see. He then continued on to the Hökberg house and stopped outside. Just as he was about to ring the bell the door opened.

  "I saw you pull up," Erik Hökberg said. "You were here about an hour ago, but you didn't call in."

  "Something came up that I had to attend to."

  They went inside. The house was quiet.

  "Actually, I came to speak to your wife."

  "She's resting in the bedroom upstairs. Or crying. Or both."

  Erik Hökberg's face was ashen. His eyes were bloodshot.

  "My son is back in school," he said. "I think it's the best thing for him."

  "We still don't know who killed Sonja," Wallander said. "But we're optimistic that we're closing in on whoever is responsible."

  "I have always been against the death penalty," Hökberg said. "But I don't know about that any more. Just promise not to let me get close to whoever did this. I don't know what I would do to him."

  He went upstairs to get his wife. Wallander walked around the living room while he waited. The silence was oppressive. It took almost a quarter of an hour, then he heard footsteps on the stairs. Hökberg came down alone.

  "She's very tired," he said. "But she'll be down shortly."

  "I'm sorry that this conversation can't wait."

  "We understand."

  They waited for her in silence. Then she turned up, barefoot and wearing black. Beside her husband she looked very small. Wallander shook her hand and expressed his condolences. She wobbled slightly then sat down. She reminded Wallander of Anette Fredman. Here was yet another mother who had lost a child. He wondered how many times he had found himself in this situation. He had to ask questions that would be salt in already painful wounds.

  This situation was perhaps worse than many of the others. Sonja Hökberg had not only been the victim of murder. Now he was about to confront them with the idea that she may also have been raped on an earlier occasion. He groped around for a way to begin.

  "To find Sonja's killer we have delved into the past. There is one particular incident that has come to our attention and that we need more information about. Probably you are the only people who can give us that information."

  Hökberg and his wife watched him intently.

  "Can we look back about 3 years?" Wallander said. "Sometime in 1994 or 1995. Did anything unusual happen to Sonja during that time?"

  Ruth, Sonja's mother, spoke very quietly. Wallander had to lean forward to catch her words. />
  "What kind of thing are you looking for?"

  "Did she ever come home looking as if she had been involved in an accident? Did she have unexplained bruises?"

  "She broke her ankle once."

  "Sprained," Erik Hökberg said. "She didn't break her ankle. She sprained her ankle."

  "I'm thinking more of bruises on her face and body. Did that ever happen?"

  Ruth Hökberg jumped in. "My daughter was never naked in the house."

  "She may have been extremely upset or depressed during this time," Wallander said.

  "She was a moody girl."

  "So neither one of you can think of anything unusual along these lines?"

  "I don't even understand why you're asking these questions."

  "He has to," Erik Hökberg said. "It's his job."

  Wallander was grateful for this.

  "I don't remember her ever coming home with bruises."

  Wallander decided he couldn't keep going around in circles.

  "We have information to indicate that Sonja was raped at some point during this time. She never reported it."

  Ruth flinched as if she had been burned. "It's not true."

  "Did she ever speak of it?"

  "That she had been raped? Never." She started laughing helplessly. "Who said this? It's a lie. It's nothing but a lie."

  Wallander had the feeling that she was withholding something. Perhaps she had suspected something of the kind. Her protestations were unconvincing.

  "The information we have is quite compelling."

  "Says who? Who is spreading these lies about Sonja?"

  "I am afraid I can't tell you that."

  "Why not?" Erik Hökberg blurted out.

  "It's standard practice during investigations of this nature."

  "Why is it?"

  "For now it has to do with making sure the source remains protected."

  "What about my daughter?" Ruth screamed. "Who is protecting her? No-one. She's dead."

  The situation was getting out of hand. Wallander regretted not letting Höglund handle this questioning. Hökberg calmed his wife, who was sobbing. It was a horrible scene.

  After a while he went on. "But she never talked about having been raped?"

  "Never."

  "And neither of you noticed anything out of the ordinary in her behaviour?"

  "She was a hard person to gauge."

  "In what way?"

  "She kept to herself. She was often in a bad temper, which I suppose is normal for teenagers."

  "Was she angry with you?"

  "Mostly with her younger brother."

  Wallander thought back to the only conversation he had ever had with the girl. She had complained then that her brother always got into her things.

  "Let's go back to the years 1994 and 1995," Wallander said. "She had returned from England. Did you notice any sudden change at that time?"

  Erik got up from his chair so violently that it fell backwards. "She came home one night, bleeding from her mouth and her nose. It was in February 1995. We asked her what had happened, but she wouldn't say. Her clothes were dirty and she was in shock. We never found out what happened. She said she had fallen. It was a lie of course. I realise that now, now that you come here and tell us she'd been raped. Why do we have to keep lying about this?"

  Ruth started crying again. She tried to say something, but it was unintelligible. Hökberg gestured to Wallander to follow him to the study.

  "You won't get anything more from her."

  "I only have a few more questions."

  "Do you know who raped her?"

  "No."

  "But you suspect someone?"

  "Yes, but I can't give you a name."

  "Was he the same person who killed her?"

  "I doubt it. But anything you can tell me may help to clarify the events that led to her death."

  "It was towards the end of February," Hökberg said, after a pause. "It snowed all day. By evening everything was white. And she came home bleeding. In the morning you could still see her blood on the snow."

  Suddenly it was as if he was overcome by the same helplessness as his wife crying in the room next door.

  "You have to get him. A person who can do something like this deserves whatever's coming to him."

  "We will get the person who is responsible," Wallander said, "but we need your help."

  "You have to understand my wife," Hökberg said. "She's lost her daughter. How is she supposed to react to being told that Sonja was also raped?"

  Wallander understood. "So it was the end of February 1995. Do you remember anything else? Did she have a boyfriend at the time?"

  "We never knew who she associated with."

  "Did any cars ever stop outside the house? Did you ever see her with a man?"

  Anger flashed in Hökberg's eyes. "A man? I thought you were talking about boyfriends?"

  "That's what I meant."

  "It was a grown man who did this to her?"

  "I repeat: I can't give you that information."

  Hökberg lifted his hands defensively. "I've told you all I know. I should get back to my wife."

  "Before I leave I'd like to take a look in Sonja's room again."

  "You'll find it just as it was the last time. We haven't changed anything."

  Hökberg went into the living room and Wallander went upstairs. When he walked into the room he had the same feeling as before. It was not the room of a 19-year-old girl. He opened the wardrobe door to look at the poster. It was still there. The Devil's Advocate. Who is the Devil? he thought. Tynnes Falk worshipped his own image. And Sonja Hökberg has a picture of the Devil in her bedroom. But he had never heard rumours of Satan worshippers in Ystad.

  He shut the wardrobe door and was about to go downstairs when a boy appeared in the doorway.

  "What are you doing here?" he said.

  Wallander told him who he was. The boy looked at him, suspiciously.

  "If you're police, you should be able to get the man who killed my sister."