Хеннинг Манкелль - Firewall

Modin nodded.

“He was already there when she let me in. And he threatened me. They locked me in the bathroom. Then I heard him start screaming at her. I could understand him since he was speaking English. At least the parts I could hear.”

“What did he say?”

“That she hadn’t done her job. That she had shown weakness.”

“Did you hear anything else?”

“Only the shots. When he came to unlock the bathroom door I thought he was going to kill me as well. He had the gun in his hand. But he said I was his hostage and that I had to do as he said. Otherwise he would kill my parents.”

Modin’s voice started to wobble.

“We’ll talk about the rest later,” Wallander said. “That’s enough. That’s plenty, in fact.”

“He said they were going to knock out the global financial system. It was going to start here, at this cash machine.”

“I know,” Wallander said. “But we’ll talk about that later. You need to sleep. You have to go home to your parents now. Then we’ll talk.”

They heard sirens approaching. Now Wallander could see a dark blue Volkswagen Golf parked behind the pickup. It had been impossible to see from where he was standing.

Wallander felt how exhausted he was. And how relieved. Martinsson came walking over.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“I know,” Wallander said. “But not now.”

It was nine minutes to six on the Monday, the twentieth of October. Wallander wondered absently what the rest of the winter was going to be like.

On Tuesday, the eleventh of November, all charges against Wallander in the Eva Persson assault case were dismissed. Höglund was the one who told him the news. She had also played a central role in the direction the investigation had taken, but he only found that out later.

A few days before, Höglund had paid a visit to Eva Persson and her mother. No one knew exactly what was said during that visit; there had been no transcription of the conversation and no third party present, although these had been court-ordered. Höglund did tell Wallander that she applied “a mild form of emotional blackmail.” What that entailed she never told him, but in time Wallander was able to put together a clearer picture. He assumed that she had told Eva Persson to turn her thoughts to the future. Even if she was now cleared in the murder of Lundberg, bringing false charges against a policeman could have unpleasant consequences. The following day Eva Persson and her mother withdrew the charges against Wallander. They acknowledged that Wallander’s version of the events had been correct, and that Eva Persson had tried to hit her mother. Wallander could still have been held accountable for his actions in the situation, but the whole matter was hastily dropped, much to everyone’s relief.

Höglund had also seen to it that a number of journalists were informed of the dropped charges, but the news never made it into the paper.

This particular Tuesday was an unusually cold fall day in Scania, with gusty northerly winds that occasionally neared storm strength. Wallander had woken up early after an unsettled night. He could not recall his dreams in any detail, but they had involved being hunted and almost choked to death by shadowy figures and objects bearing down on him.

When he arrived at the station around eight o’clock, he decided he would only stay for a short while. The day before he had decided he would finally get to the bottom of a question that had been troubling him for a long time. After casting his eye over a few forms and making sure that the photo album Marianne Falk had lent to the police had been returned to her, he left the station and drove to the Hökbergs’ house. He had spoken to Erik Hökberg the day before and arranged a meeting. Sonja’s brother Emil was at school, and Erik’s wife was on one of her frequent trips to see her sister in Höör. Erik Hökberg looked pale, and as if he had lost weight. According to a rumor that had reached Wallander, Sonja Hökberg’s funeral had been an intensely emotional affair. Wallander stepped into the house and assured Erik that his business would not take long.

“You said you wanted to see Sonja’s room,” Erik said. “But you never said why it was so important.”

“I’ll explain it to you when we get up there. Why don’t you come with me?”

“Nothing has been changed in there. We don’t have the energy. Not yet.”

They walked upstairs and into the pink room where Wallander had once immediately sensed that something was off.

“I don’t think this room has always looked the way it does now,” he said. “At some point Sonja redecorated her room, didn’t she?”

Erik Hökberg looked baffled.

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t know. I’m asking you.”

Erik swallowed. Wallander waited patiently.

“It was after that time,” Erik said. “The rape, I mean. Suddenly she took everything down from the walls and got out all of her old things from when she was a little girl. Things that had been stored in boxes in the attic for years. We never understood why she did it, and she never said anything about it.”

Something was taken from her, Wallander thought. And she tried to run away from it in two ways: by running back to a childhood where everything was still all right, and by planning a revenge by proxy.

“That was all I wanted to know,” Wallander said.

“Why is it so important to you now? Nothing matters anymore. It won’t bring Sonja back. Ruth and Emil and I are living half a life, if that.”

“Sometimes one feels a need to get to the bottom of things,” Wallander said apologetically. “Unanswered questions can hang on and on. But you’re right, of course. It doesn’t change anything.”

They left the room and went back downstairs. Erik Hökberg asked if he wanted a cup of coffee, but Wallander declined. He wanted to leave this depressing place as soon as possible.

He drove downtown, parked on Hamngatan, and walked up to the bookstore that had just opened for the day. He was finally picking up the book on refinishing furniture that he had ordered for Linda. He was shocked at the price. He had them gift-wrap it and took it back to the car. Linda was coming to see him the following day and he would give her the book then.

He was back in his office by nine. At nine-thirty he gathered up his folders and went to one of the conference rooms. Today they were having a final meeting to discuss the Tynnes Falk case before handing the documents over to the prosecutor. Since the murder of Elvira Lindfeldt had involved the Malmö police, Inspector Forsman was also present at the meeting.

At the meeting Wallander had not yet heard about the dropped charges against him, but this was not anything that weighed heavily on his mind. The most important thing was still the fact that Robert Modin had survived. This helped him even when he was overwhelmed by thoughts that he might have been able to prevent Jonas Landahl’s death if he had been able to think just a little further ahead. Part of him knew that this self-accusation was unreasonable, but these thoughts came and went, regardless.

For once, Wallander was the last to enter the conference room. He said hello to Forsman and did in fact remember his face from the police conference they had both attended. Only two people were absent: Hans Alfredsson had returned to Stockholm and Nyberg was sick with the flu. Wallander sat down, and they started reviewing the case material. They had so much to cover that the meeting ran on until one o’clock, but at that point they could finally close the books on it.

Wallander’s memories of the case had started losing clarity in the three weeks that had gone by since the shooting incident by the cash machine. But the facts that they had uncovered since then strongly supported their initial conlusions.