Хеннинг Манкелль - Firewall

The music died away and the minister started to speak. He started by reminding them of Christ’s words, “let the little ones come unto me.” Wallander concentrated on the wreath that lay on the coffin, counting the blossoms in order to keep the lump in his throat from growing.

The service was short. Afterward they approached the coffin. Anette Fredman was breathing hard, as if she were in the final few yards of a race. Agneta Malmström stood right behind them. Wallander turned to the minister, who seemed impatient.

“Why were there no church bells?” Wallander asked him. “There should be bells ringing as we walk out, and not a recording, either.”

The minister nodded hesitantly. Wallander wondered what would have happened if he had pulled out his police ID. They started walking out. Anette and Jens Fredman went ahead of the others. Wallander said hello to Agneta Malmström.

“I recognized you,” she said. “We’ve never met, but I’ve seen your face in the papers.”

“She asked me to come. Did she call you, too?”

“No, I came of my own accord.”

“What’s going to happen to her now?”

Agneta Malmström shook her head slowly.

“I don’t know. She’s started drinking heavily. I have no idea how Jens is going to get on.”

At this point they reached the vestibule, where Anette Fredman and Jens were waiting for them. The church bells rang. Wallander opened the church doors, taking one last look at the coffin. Some men were already in the process of removing it through a side door.

Suddenly a flash went off in his face. There was a press photographer waiting outside the church. Anette Fredman held up her hands to shield her face. The photographer turned from her and tried to get a picture of the boy. Wallander put out his arm to stop him, but the photographer was too quick. He got his picture.

“Why can’t you leave us alone?” Anette Fredman cried.

The boy started to cry. Wallander grabbed the photographer and pulled him aside.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he yelled.

“None of your fucking business,” said the photographer. He was about Wallander’s age and had bad breath.

“I shoot whatever sells,” he added. “Pictures of a serial killer’s funeral sell. Too bad I didn’t get here earlier.”

Wallander reached for his police ID, then changed his mind and snatched the camera. The photographer tried to pull it out of his hands, but Wallander was stronger. In a split second he had opened the camera and pulled out the film.

“There have to be limits,” Wallander said and handed the camera back to him.

The photographer stared at him, then hauled his cell phone out of his pocket.

“I’m calling the cops,” he said. “That was assault.”

“Go ahead,” Wallander said. “Do it. I’m a detective with the homicide division in Ystad. Inspector Kurt Wallander. Please call my colleagues in Malmö and tell them whatever you want.”

Wallander let the roll of film fall on the ground and broke it up with his foot. The church bells stopped ringing.

Wallander was sweaty and still enraged. Anette Fredman’s shrill plea to be left alone echoed in his head. The photographer stared at the destroyed roll of film. The group of boys were still playing soccer.

When she had called, Anette Fredman had asked him to join them for coffee after the service. He had not been able to say no.

“There won’t be any pictures in the paper,” Wallander said.

“Why can’t they leave us alone?”

Wallander had nothing to say. He looked over at Agneta Malmström, but she had nothing to say, either.

The apartment in the shabby rental building was exactly as Wallander remembered it. Agneta Malmström accompanied them. They sat quietly while they waited for the coffee to brew. Wallander thought he heard the clink of a glass bottle in the kitchen.

Jens was sitting on the floor playing quietly with a toy car. Wallander realized that Agneta Malmström found it all as depressing as he did, but there seemed to be nothing to say.

They sat there with their coffee cups. Anette Fredman sat across from them with shiny eyes. Agneta Malmström tried to ask her how she was managing financially now that she was unemployed. Anette Fredman answered in vague perfunctory phrases.

“We manage. Things will work out somehow. One day at a time.”

The conversation died away. Wallander looked down at his watch. It was close to one o’clock. He got up and shook Anette Fredman’s hand. She burst into tears. Wallander was taken aback. He didn’t know what to do.

“You go,” Agneta Malmström said. “I’ll stay with her a little while.”

“I’ll call to see how things are going,” Wallander said. Then he awkwardly patted the boy’s head, and left.

He sat in the car for a while before starting the engine. He thought about the photographer who was so sure the pictures of a serial killer’s funeral would sell.

I can’t deny that this is how it is now, he thought. But I also can’t deny that I don’t understand a single bit of it.

He drove through the fall landscape toward Ystad.

It had been a hell of a morning.

He parked the car and walked in through the doors of the police station shortly after two.

The wind had picked up from the east. A cloud belt was moving in over the coast.

By the time Wallander reached the office, he had a headache. He looked through his desk drawers to see if he could find any tablets. He heard Hansson walk past his door whistling to himself. He finally found a crumpled packet of acetaminophen in the back of a drawer. He went to the lunchroom to get himself a glass of water and a cup of coffee. Some young police officers, who had been hired during the last couple of years, were sitting at one table talking loudly. Wallander nodded to them and said hello. He heard them talking about their time at the police academy. He walked back to his office and watched the two headache tablets slowly dissolve in the glass of water.

He thought about Anette Fredman, and tried to imagine what the future might hold for the little boy in the impoverished suburb of Rosengård who had played so quietly on the apartment floor. He had seemed as if he were hiding from the world, carrying within him his memories of a dead father and now two equally dead siblings.

Wallander drained the glass in front of him and immediately felt the headache lifting. He looked at a case folder that Martinsson had put on his desk, with “Urgent as all hell” written on a red Post-it note on the front. Wallander already knew the facts of the case. They had discussed it on the phone last week while Wallander was at a national police conference on new directions for policing the violence associated with the growing motorcycle-gang movement. Wallander had asked to be excused, but Chief Holgersson had insisted. She specifically wanted him on this. One of the gangs had just bought a farm outside of Ystad and they had to be prepared to deal with them in the future.

Wallander decided to return to being a police officer and opened the folder with a sigh. Martinsson had written a concise report of the events. When he’d gotten to the end of it, Wallander leaned back in his chair and thought about what he had just read.

Two girls, one nineteen, the other not more than fourteen, had ordered a taxi at a restaurant shortly after ten o’clock on a Tuesday evening. They had asked to be driven to Rydsgard. One of the girls was in the front seat. When they reached the outskirts of Ystad she asked the driver to stop the car saying she wanted to move to the back seat. When the taxi pulled over to the side of the road, the girl in the backseat had pulled out a hammer and hit the driver in the head. The girl in the front seat had helped her companion by stabbing him in the chest with a knife. They had taken the driver’s wallet and cell phone and left the car. The driver had been able to make an emergency call on the taxi radio despite his condition. His name was Johan Lundberg and he was sixty years old. He had been a taxi driver almost all his adult life. He had been able to give good descriptions of both girls. Martinsson had been able to get their names by describing them in turn to the restaurant patrons. Both girls had been arrested in their homes. Although they were so young, both were now being held in custody due to the severity and violence of the crime. Johan Lundberg had been conscious when he was admitted at the hospital, but later his condition had suddenly deteriorated. Now he was unconscious and the doctors were unsure of the prognosis. As a motive for the crime, according to Martinsson, the girls had only offered the brief explanation that they “needed money.”