Firewall (22 page)

The marsh acquired extra significance for Falk later in life, not least after his meeting with Carter and the realisation that they shared some of their most fundamental understandings of life. The marsh became a symbol for the chaos of life, where the only end was to drown yourself. Or make sure everyone else did.

Jacob's Marsh. That was a good name. Not that the operation needed a name, but it was a way to honour Falk's memory. A gesture only Carter would appreciate.

He stayed in bed a few minutes more and thought about Falk. But when he realised he was getting sentimental he got up, took a shower and went down to the dining room to eat his breakfast.

He spent the rest of the morning in his living room, listening to Beethoven's string quartets until he couldn't stand Celine's clatter in the kitchen a moment longer. Then he went to the beach for a walk. His chauffeur and bodyguard, Alfredo, walked a short distance behind him. Whenever Carter went into Luanda and saw the social disintegration, the heaps of garbage, the poverty and misery, he felt that the action he was taking was justified.

He walked along the ocean and from time to time he looked back at the decomposing city. Whatever rose from the ashes of the fire he was going to start would be better than this.

He was back at the house by 11 a.m. Celine had gone home. He drank a cup of coffee and a glass of water. Then he retired to his study. It had a breathtaking view over the harbour, but he pulled the curtains shut. He liked the evenings best. He needed to keep the strong African sun away from his sensitive eyes. He sat at the computer and went through his daily routine. Somewhere deep inside that electronic world an invisible clock was ticking. Falk had created it from his instructions. It was Sunday, October 12, only eight days away from D-Day.

He had finished his regular checks by 11.15 a.m.

He was on the verge of switching off the computer, when he froze. An icon was flashing from the corner of the screen. The rhythm was two short flashes and one long flash. He took out the manual that Falk had written for him. At first he thought there had to be a mistake. But it was all too true. Someone had just broken through the first layer of security into Falk's computer in Sweden. In that little town, Ystad, which Carter had only ever seen in postcards. He stared at the screen, unable to believe his eyes. Falk had sworn that the system would be impossible to break into. But still someone had done it.

Carter started sweating. He forced himself to remain calm. There were many layers to the security system in Falk's computer, and the innermost core of the program was buried under miles and miles of decoys and firewalls that no-one could penetrate. Even so, someone was trying to get in.

He thought long and hard. He had immediately sent someone to Ystad after hearing of Falk's death. There had been several unfortunate incidents, but until now Carter had felt sure that everything was under control, especially since he had reacted so quickly.

Everything was still under control, he decided, even though he couldn't deny that someone had broken through the first line of defence in Falk's computer and was possibly trying to go further. This needed to be taken care of as soon as possible.

Who could it be? Carter couldn't believe it was one of the policemen he had heard about through his informant, the ones apparently resolving the details of Falk's death and the other events with what appeared to be complacency.

But who else could it be? He found no answer and remained motionless in front of his computer as dusk fell over Luanda. When, finally, he got up from the desk he was still outwardly calm. But a problem had arisen and it was something that needed to be rectified.

He missed Falk more than ever. He typed his message and sent it off into the electronic realm. His answer came back after about a minute.

Wallander was standing behind Martinsson. Modin was sitting at the computer, where an ever-changing matrix of numbers was rushing by on the screen. Then the screen started to settle down. Only the occasional ones and zeroes flashed by. Then it became completely dark. Modin looked at Martinsson, who nodded. He went on tapping commands into the computer and fresh hordes of numbers flashed by. Then they stopped again.

"I have no idea what this is," Modin said. "And I've never seen anything like this."

"Could it be a computation of some kind?" Martinsson said.

Modin shook his head. "I don't think so. It looks like a system of numbers awaiting a command."

It was Martinsson's turn to shake his head. "Can you explain that?" he said.

"It can't be a calculation. There is no evidence of any equation here. The numbers only relate to themselves. I think it looks more like a code."

Wallander was not satisfied. He wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but it wasn't a stream of meaningless numbers.

"Didn't people stop with codes after the Second World War?" he said, but there was no answer from the other two. They kept staring at the numbers.

"It's something to do with the number 20," Modin said.

Martinsson leaned forward, but Wallander's back was hurting and he remained upright. Modin pointed and explained what he meant to Martinsson, who listened with interest. Wallander's thoughts started to drift.

"Could it be something to do with the year 2000?" Martinsson said. "Isn't that when electronic chaos is supposed to break out and all computers are going to go haywire?"

"It's nothing to do with 2000," Robert said stubbornly. "It's the number 20. Furthermore, no computer ever simply goes haywire. Only people do that."

"It will be the 20th in eight days," Wallander said.

Modin and Martinsson kept bouncing ideas back and forth. They called up new numbers on to the screen. Wallander was starting to get impatient.

The phone rang in his pocket. He walked to the door and answered it. It was Höglund.

"I may have found something," she said.

Wallander went into the hall.

"What is it?"

"You remember I told you I was going to root around in Lundberg's life?" she said. "First I was going to talk to his sons. The older one is Carl-Einar. It dawned on me that I had seen that name before. I couldn't remember where."

The name meant nothing to Wallander.

"I started combing through the computer records."

"I thought only Martinsson could do that?"

"Truth be told, I think soon you'll be the only one who
can't
do it."

"What did you find?"

"That Carl-Einar Lundberg was tried for a crime a number of years ago. I think it was while you were on sick leave."

"What did he do?"

"Well, apparently nothing – since he got off – but he was being tried for rape."

Wallander thought for a moment.

"I suppose it's worth looking into," he said, "though I have to admit I can't see how it fits into either Falk's death or Hökberg's."

"I think I'll follow it through," Höglund said.

Wallander went back to the others.

We're not getting anywhere, he thought in a sudden spasm of hopelessness. We don't even know what we're looking for. We're lost.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Modin was tired and his head ached. He stopped working some time after 6 p.m., but he wasn't giving up. He squinted up at Martinsson and Wallander and said he was more than happy to continue in the morning, but "I need time to think," he said. "I need to consult some of my friends and come up with an approach."

Martinsson arranged for Modin to be driven home.

"Do you think he meant what he said?" Wallander asked Martinsson as they walked into the station.

"That he needed time to think and plan his approach?" Martinsson said. "That's what we do when we run into difficulties. Isn't that what we asked him to do?"

"He sounded like an old doctor who had a patient with unusual symptoms. He would consult with friends, he said."

"He means with other hackers, but comparing it to a doctor and an unusual illness is actually quite an apt simile."

Martinsson seemed to have got over the fact that they still had no official sanction for working with Modin. Wallander thought it as well not to raise the subject again.

Höglund and Hansson were both in. Otherwise the station was pleasantly empty. Wallander thought in passing about the mountain of other work growing on his desk. He told the others to assemble for a quick meeting. Symbolically at least, they were at the end of a working week.

"I talked to one of the dog handlers," Hansson said. "Norberg. He's getting a new dog actually, since Hercules is almost past it."

"I thought Hercules was dead." Martinsson said.

"Well, he's more or less done for. He's blind, anyway."

Martinsson burst into weary laughter. "That would be something for the papers," he said. "The police and their blind search dogs."

Wallander was not amused. He would miss the old dog, perhaps more than he would miss some of his colleagues when the time came.

"I've been thinking about this business of dog names," Hansson continued. "I can understand calling a dog Hercules, but I still can't get my head around Steadfast."

"We don't have any police dogs by that name, do we?" Martinsson said.

Wallander slammed his fist down on the table. It was the most authoritative gesture at his disposal. "That's enough of that. Now, what did Norberg say?"

"That it was reasonable to assume that objects or bodies that were frozen or had been frozen could stop giving off a scent. Dogs can have trouble finding bodies in winter, when it's very cold."

Wallander proceeded to his next point. "What about the van? Any news?"

"A Mercedes van was stolen in Ånge two weeks ago."

"Where is Ånge?"

"Outside Luleå," Martinsson said.

"The hell it is," Hansson said. "It's closer to Sundsvall."

Höglund went over to the map on the wall. Hansson was right.

"It could be the one," Hansson said. "Sweden is not a big country."

"It doesn't sound right to me," Wallander said. "But there could be other stolen cars that haven't been reported yet. We'll have to keep an eye on incoming news."

He turned to Höglund for her report.

"Lundberg has two sons who are as unlike each other as could be. Nils-Emil, the one who lives in Malmö, is a janitor in a local school. I tried to get him over the phone. His wife said he was out training with his orienteering club. She was very talkative. It seems that Lundberg's death came as a hard blow to her husband, who is also a regular churchgoer. It's the younger brother who is of more interest to us. Carl-Einar was accused of rape in 1993, but he was never charged. The girl's name was Englund."

"I remember that case," Martinsson said. "It was horrible."

Wallander's only memories from this time were of long walks on the beaches of Skagen in Denmark. Then a lawyer had been murdered and Wallander had returned to his duties, somewhat to his surprise.

"Were you in charge of that investigation?" Wallander said.

Martinsson made a face. "It was Svedberg."

The room fell silent as they thought about their dead colleague.

"I haven't got through all the paperwork yet," Höglund said after a while. "So I don't yet know why he wasn't convicted."

"Nor was anyone else," Martinsson said. "Whoever did it got off. We could never find another suspect. I remember that Svedberg was convinced it was Lundberg. I'd never made the connection with Johan Lundberg."

"Even if we assume that he was guilty as accused," Wallander said, "does that satisfactorily account for the fact that his father was robbed and killed? Or that Hökberg was later burned to death? Or that Falk's fingers were cut off?"

"It was a vicious rape," Höglund said. "You have to at least imagine a perpetrator out there who has been guilty of horrendous violence. The Englund girl was in hospital for a long time. She had severe injuries to the head and to other parts of her body."

"We will look at this more closely," Wallander said. "But I don't think that Carl-Einar Lundberg will turn out to have anything to do with this case. There's something else at work behind all of this, and we don't know yet what it is."

Wallander went on to describe the work that Modin was doing with Falk's computer. No-one made any comment about an unauthorised expert, someone who had served time for advanced computer crime, being brought in.

"I don't really get this," Hansson said. "What do you expect to find in that computer? A confession? An account of everything that's happened? A reason for all this?"

"I don't know if there's anything there that will be of use to us," Wallander said simply. "But we need to know what Falk was up to. From all I know, he was a very odd customer."

Hansson obviously questioned the wisdom of devoting so much time to Falk's computer, but he didn't say so. Wallander saw that the time had come to call the meeting to an end. Everyone was tired and needed to rest.

"We have to continue in this same vein," he started, then interrupted himself and turned to Höglund. "Whatever happened with Hökberg's bag?"

"I'm sorry, I forgot about that," she said. "Her mother said she thought that maybe an address book was missing."

"Maybe?"

"I believe she was telling the truth. The daughter was a very private person. Her mother thinks she remembered her having a small black address book in which she wrote people's phone numbers. She couldn't say for certain. Anyway, it wasn't in the bag."

"If that's true, it's a valuable bit of information. Persson should be able to confirm whether she had such a book." Wallander thought for a while before continuing. "I think we should reassign some tasks. I want Höglund to concentrate on Hökberg and Persson. There has to be a boyfriend out there somewhere, someone who could have given her a lift out of town. Keep looking for any information that can tell us what sort of girl she was and what she did with her time. Martinsson will keep Modin happy. Someone else can check up on Lundberg's son – I'll do that, and I will keep on looking into Falk's life. Hansson can be in charge of keeping the information flowing. Keep Viktorsson informed too, and keep trying to find witnesses and looking for an explanation as to how a body can disappear from a morgue. Last, but not least, someone has to go to Växjö and speak to Persson's father. Just so we can cross that off the list."

Wallander called the meeting to an end and they all stood up. He got out as quickly as he could. It was already 7.30 p.m. He had not had much to eat all day, but he didn't feel hungry. He drove to Mariagatan and scanned the street before unlocking the front door.

For the next hour he cleaned the flat and sorted his laundry. Now and again he stopped in front of the television set and watched the news programme. One item caught his eye. An American general was asked what future wars would look like. They would be fought with computers, he explained. The era of ground troops would soon be over; at least their role would be much smaller.

That made Wallander think of something and, since it was still early, he looked out the number and sat at the phone.

Erik Hökberg answered almost at once. "How is the investigation going?" he said. "We're not doing too well here. We really do need to know what happened to Sonja."

"We're doing all we can."

"But are you getting anywhere? Anywhere nearer to finding who killed her?"

"We don't know that yet."

"How can it be so difficult to find someone who murdered an innocent girl – in a power station, of all places?"

"I'm calling you," Wallander said, "because I need to ask you a question. Did Sonja know how to use a computer?"

"Of course she did. Don't all young people use computers nowadays?"

"Was she interested in them?"

"She mainly surfed the Net, I think. She was pretty adept, but I don't think she was as technically advanced as Emil."

Wallander felt somewhat helpless. Martinsson should have been the one asking these questions.

"You must have been thinking over what happened," he said. "You must have asked yourself why Sonja killed the taxi driver. And then why she in turn was killed."

Erik Hökberg's voice was close to breaking as he answered. "I go into her room sometimes," he said. "I just sit in there and look around. I just don't understand it."

"If you had to describe Sonja to a stranger, how would you do that?"

"I'd say that she was strong-willed. Not always an easy person to deal with. She would have done well in life."

Wallander thought of the room that had seemed frozen in time. The room of a little girl, not the person her stepfather seemed to be describing.

"Didn't she have a boyfriend?" Wallander said.

"Not that I know of."

"Isn't that strange?"

"Why is it strange?"

"She was 19. And good-looking."

"She never brought anyone home."

"What about phone calls? Did anyone call her a lot?"

"She had her own line. She asked for it when she turned 18. It often rang, but I wouldn't know who was calling."

"Did she have an answering machine?"

"I've checked it. There were no messages left."

"If anyone does call and leave a message, I'd like to have the tape."

Wallander suddenly thought of the film poster in the wardrobe in her room. The only object apart from her clothes that bore witness to the teenager who lived in the room, someone who was on her way to becoming a grown woman. He searched for the title in his mind.
The Devil's Advocate.

"Inspector Höglund will be in touch with you soon," he said. "She will ask a number of questions and if you are serious about wanting us to find Soma's killer you'll have to answer in as much detail as possible."

"You don't think we've been helpful enough so far?" Erik Hökberg said, angrily.

Wallander didn't blame him. "No, on the contrary, I think you've been extremely helpful. I won't keep you any longer."

He hung up. The poster lingered in his mind. He looked at the time and saw it was 9.30 p.m. He dialled the restaurant in Stockholm where Linda worked. A distracted man with a heavy accent answered. He said he would find Linda. It took several long minutes for her to come to the phone. When she heard who it was she was furious.

"You can't call me here at this time, you know that. This is our busiest time. You'll get me into trouble."

"I know," Wallander said. "I'm so sorry – just a quick question."

"It had better be quick."

"Have you seen a film called
The Devil's Advocate,
with Al Pacino?"

"Is that what this is about? A film?"

"That's it."

"I'm hanging up."

Now it was Wallander's turn to get angry. "At least answer the question. Have you seen it?"

"Yes, I have," she hissed.

"What's it about?"

"Oh my God! I don't believe this."

"It's about God?"

"In a way. It's about a lawyer who turns out to be the Devil."

"Is that it?"

"Isn't that enough? Why do you need to know this anyway? Are you having nightmares?"

"I'm trying to solve a murder. Why would a 19-year-old girl have a poster of this film on her wall?"

"Probably because she thinks Al Pacino is hot. Or else maybe she worships the Devil. How the hell would I know?"

"Do you have to use that language?"

"Yes."

"Is there anything else to this film?"

"Why don't you see it for yourself? I'm sure it's out on video."

Wallander felt like an idiot. He should have thought of this himself. He could have simply rented the video and not bothered Linda.