“Oh, I doubt that.” Her answer came quickly and unwavering.
“Why do you say that?”
“I was married to him for many years. I knew him fairly well then, but not later on.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. He just changed.”
“In what way?”
“I didn’t know what he was thinking anymore.”
Wallander looked at her thoughtfully.
“But you may still be able to notice if something’s gone. You said yourself that you visited him here many times.”
“I could probably tell you if a lamp or a painting was missing, but nothing else. Tynnes had many secrets.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Just what you think it means. I didn’t know what he was thinking or what he did. I tried to explain this to you during our first telephone conversation.”
Wallander was reminded of what he had read in Tynnes’s diary the night before.
“Do you know if your ex-husband kept a diary?”
“I’m sure he didn’t.”
“Did he ever keep one?”
“Never.”
So she’s right about one thing, he thought. She didn’t know what he was up to, at least not that he had a diary.
“Was your ex-husband interested in outer space?”
Her surprise seemed completely genuine.
“Why do you ask that?”
“I was just wondering.”
“When we were young we used to sometimes look up at the stars together, but I can’t remember any other signs of interest after that.”
Wallander switched to a new topic.
“You said before that he had many enemies, and that he seemed worried about something.”
“Yes, he actually said that to me.”
“What else did he say?” Wallander asked.
“That people like him always had enemies.”
“Was that all he said?”
“Yes.”
“‘People like me always have enemies’?” he repeated.
“Yes.”
“What did he mean by that?”
“I’ve already told you that I no longer understood him.”
A car pulled over to where they were standing and Nyberg got out. Wallander decided to end the conversation for now and wrote down her phone number. He said he would be in touch later in the day.
“One last question: Can you think of any reason why someone would steal his body?”
“Of course not.”
Wallander nodded. He had no more questions.
When she had climbed into her car and backed out of her parking space, Nyberg came over to him.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
“A break-in.”
“Do we really have time for this right now?”
“It’s connected to the other events. I don’t know exactly how yet, but I’d like to see if you find anything in there.”
Nyberg blew his nose before answering.
“You were right, by the way. Once our colleagues in Malmö brought in that relay it was obvious. The substation workers were able to show us exactly where it used to fit.”
Wallander suppressed his excitement.
“Room for doubt?”
“None at all.”
Nyberg went into the building. Wallander looked down the street in the direction of the department stores and the cash machine.
The connection between Sonja Hökberg and Tynnes Falk was confirmed. But what it meant he didn’t yet know.
He started walking back to the police station. After only a few yards he picked up the pace.
Anxiety drove him on.
Chapter Fourteen
After he returned to the station, Wallander tried to construct a reliable outline of the now-chaotic mix of details. But the various events remained sharply separated in his mind. They collided only to quickly continue on their separate ways.
Shortly before eleven, he went to the bathroom and washed his face in cold water. That was also something he had picked up from Rydberg.
Nothing is better for you when your impatience is threatening to take over your mind. Nothing is ever better than cold water.
Then he continued on into the lunchroom to get more coffee. But the coffee machine was broken, as it often was. Martinsson had at some point suggested that they all pitch in to buy a new one. His argument was that no one could reasonably expect good police work from officers without reliable access to coffee. Wallander looked unhappily at the machine and remembered that he had a tin of instant coffee somewhere in his desk. He returned to his room and started looking for it. He finally found it in the bottom drawer together with some shoe cleaner and a couple of frayed gloves.
Then he compiled a list of all the events of the case. He made a timeline in the margin. He was trying to break through the surface of the case to the layer that he knew had to be there that connected all the events.
When he was finished, he felt as if he were looking at an evil and incomprehensible fairy tale. Two girls went out and had some beers. One of the girls was so young that she had no business being served in the first place. Some time during that evening, they traded places. This happened at the same time that an Asian man came into the restaurant and sat down at a nearby table. This man paid with a false credit card in the name of Fu Cheng, with a Hong Kong address.
After a couple of hours, the girls ordered a taxi, asked to be driven to Rydsgård, and attacked the driver. They took his money and left, each going separately to her home. When they were picked up by the police they immediately confessed, sharing the blame and saying their motive was money. The older of the two girls then took advantage of a momentary lapse in security and escaped from the police station. Later her burned corpse was found at the power substation outside Ystad. In all likelihood she was murdered. The substation in turn was an important link in the power distribution grid for southern Sweden. When Sonja Hökberg died, she plunged much of the region of Scania into darkness. After this event, Eva Persson retracted her earlier confession and changed her story.
At the same time as these events, a parallel story was unfolding. There was a possibility that this parenthesis, this minor story, was in fact connected to the very heart of the other occurrence somehow. A divorced computer consultant by the name of Tynnes Falk cleaned his apartment one Sunday and then went for an evening walk. He was later found dead in front of an automatic teller machine nearby. After a preliminary investigation that included a conclusive autopsy report, the police eliminated any suspicions of possible crime and considered the case closed. Later the body was removed from the morgue and an electrical relay from the Ystad substation was left in its place. Falk’s apartment was also robbed in conjunction with these latest events, and at least a diary and a photograph were missing.
At the periphery of all these events, figuring as a face in a group photograph and as a customer in a restaurant, was an Asian man.
Wallander read through everything he had just written. He knew it was too early to draw any conclusions, but while he had been sketching out his summary of the events he had also seen a new connection. If Sonja Hökberg had been murdered, it had to be because someone wanted to make sure she didn’t talk. Tynnes Falk’s body had also been removed in order to conceal something. This was the common denominator.
The question is, What needs to be covered up, Wallander thought, and by whom?
Wallander was about to push his notes aside when something popped into his head. It was something Erik Hökberg had said, something about the vulnerability of modern society. Wallander took a new look at his notes, starting at the beginning.