Хеннинг Манкелль - Firewall

“Take your gun with you,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

“Where to?”

“Malmö.”

Wallander tried to explain the situation along the way, but Hansson seemed to have trouble understanding the full story. Wallander kept asking him to try Elvira’s number, but there was no answer. Wallander put the police siren on the roof and increased his speed. He prayed silently to all the gods he could think of to spare Modin’s life. But he already feared the worst.

They stopped in front of the house shortly after ten o’clock. The house was dark. They stepped out of the car. Wallander asked Hansson to wait in the shadows down by the gate. Then he cocked his gun and walked up the path. When he reached the front door, he stopped and listened. Then he rang the bell. There was no answer. He rang again. Then he felt the doorknob. It was unlocked. He gestured for Hansson to come up.

“We should send for reinforcements,” Hansson hissed.

“There’s no time.”

Wallander slowly opened the door. He listened. He didn’t know what was waiting for them in the dark. He remembered that the light switch was on the wall to the left of the door, and after fumbling around for a while he found it. As soon as the light came on he took a step to the side and crouched down.

The hall was empty.

Some light fell into the living room. He could see that Elvira was sitting on the sofa. She was looking at him. Wallander took a deep breath. She didn’t move. Wallander knew that she was dead. He called out to Hansson. They carefully went into the living room.

She had been shot in the neck. The pale yellow sofa was drenched in blood.

Then they searched the house, but they didn’t find anything.

Robert Modin was gone. Wallander knew that could only mean one thing.

Someone had been waiting for him in the house.

The man in the field had not been working alone.

He didn’t know what it was that kept him going that night. He imagined it was equal parts self-reproach and rage. But the overriding emotion was his fear for what might have happened to Modin. His first terrified thought when he realized that Elvira was dead was that Modin had also been killed. But once they had searched the house and established that it was empty, Wallander realized that Modin might still be alive. Everything up to this point in the case seemed to have been about concealment and secrets, and that must be the reason for Modin’s abduction as well. Wallander didn’t have to remind himself of Sonja Hökberg’s and Jonas Landahl’s fates. But this was not precisely the same situation. That time the police had not known what was going to happen. Now that they knew more, they had a better starting point, even though they didn’t yet know what had happened to Modin.

Wallander also had to acknowledge that part of what was fueling him that night was his sense of betrayal, and his bitter disappointment that life had once more cheated him out of the promise of companionship. He could not claim to miss Elvira herself. Her death had mainly frightened him. She had accessed his letter to the dating service and approached him with the intention of tricking and manipulating him. And he had been thoroughly taken in. It had been a masterful performance. The humiliation was intense. The rage that coursed through him came from many different sources at once.

But Hansson would later tell him how collected and calm he had seemed. His evaluation of the situation and his suggested course of action had been quick and impressive.

Wallander had realized he needed to return to Ystad as soon as possible. That was where the heart of the case still was. Hansson would stay in the house, alert the Malmö police, and fill them in as necessary.

But Hansson was also to do something else. Wallander had been very firm on this matter. Even though it was the middle of the night, he wanted Hansson to try to find out more about Elvira Lindfeldt’s background. Was there anything that linked her to Angola? Who did she know in Malmö?

“Who was she, anyway?” Hansson asked. “Why was Modin here? How did you know her?”

Wallander didn’t answer, and Hansson never repeated the question. Afterward he would sometimes ask people about it when Wallander was not present. He discussed the fact that Wallander must have known her since he placed Modin in her care. But no one knew anything about this mysterious woman. Despite the intensive investigations that they conducted, there was always the sense that her relationship to Wallander was not a matter to be delved into. No one ever found out exactly what had happened.

Wallander left Hansson and returned to Ystad. He concentrated on a single question in his mind: What had happened to Modin?

As Wallander drove through the night he had a feeling that the impending catastrophe was very close. What it was exactly that needed to be stopped, and how he was going to prevent it, he was not sure. The most important thing was saving Modin’s life. Wallander drove at a ridiculous speed. He had asked Hansson to call ahead and let the others know he was on his way. Hansson had asked if he should call and wake up Chief Holgersson, and Wallander had lost his temper and screamed at him. He did not want him to call her. It was the first time he showed some of the intense strain that he was under.

At half past one, Wallander slowed down and turned into the station parking lot. He shivered from the cold as he ran toward the front doors.

The others were waiting for him in the conference room. Martinsson, Höglund, and Alfredsson were already there, with Nyberg on his way. Höglund handed him a cup of coffee that he almost immediately managed to spill down the front of his trousers.

Then he got down to business. Robert Modin had disappeared without a trace, and the woman he had been staying with had been found murdered.

“The first conclusion we can draw,” Wallander said, “is that the man in the field was not working alone. It was a fatal mistake to assume that this was the case. I should have realized it earlier.”

Höglund was the one who asked the inevitable question.

“Who was she?”

“Her name was Elvira Lindfeldt,” Wallander said. “She was an acquaintance of mine.”

“But how did she know Modin was coming by tonight?”

“We’ll have to tackle that question later.”

Did they believe him? Wallander thought he had lied convincingly but he couldn’t tell. He knew he should have told them about sending in the ad to the dating service, and that someone must have broken into his computer and read the letter. But he didn’t say any of these things. He tried to tell himself, in his own defense, that the most important thing was finding Modin.

At this point the door opened and Nyberg came in. His pajama top peeked out from under his sport coat.

“What the hell happened?” he asked. “Hansson called from Malmö and seemed out of his mind. It was impossible to understand a word he was saying.”

“Sit down,” Wallander said. “It’s going to be a long night.”

Then he nodded to Höglund, who summarized the current situation for Nyberg.

“Don’t the Malmö police have their own forensic team?” Nyberg asked.

“I want you to go out there,” Wallander said. “Not only in case anything else turns up but also just so I can hear what you think.”

Nyberg nodded without saying anything. Then he took out a comb and started pulling it through his unruly thinning hair.

Wallander continued.

“There is one more conclusion we can draw here, and it is simply this: something else is going to happen. And this something is somehow based here in Ystad.”

He looked over at Martinsson.

“I take it someone is still stationed outside Runnerström Square?”