He pushed open the door to Wallander’s office. A coat with a large yellow spot on the front hung on the back of the door.
The man walked over to the desk. He looked at the computer for a moment before flicking it on. What he was about to do would take about twenty minutes, but he wasn’t worried that anyone would come in during that time. It was very easy to go into Wallander’s files and examine the material there.
When the man was done, he turned off the light and carefully opened the door. The hallway was empty.
He left the same way he had come.
Chapter Twenty
Sunday morning, the twelfth of October, Wallander woke up at nine o’clock. Even though he had slept only six hours he felt fully rested. Before going in to the station, he decided to take a walk. The rain from the night before was gone. It was a fine and clear autumn day. It was almost nine degrees Celsius.
He walked through the front doors of the police station at a quarter past ten. Before going to his office, he walked past the control room and asked who of his colleagues had come in.
“Martinsson is here. Hansson had to go pick someone up. Höglund hasn’t been in yet.”
“I’m here,” Wallander heard her voice behind his back. “Did I miss anything?”
“No,” Wallander said. “But why don’t you come with me?”
“I’ll just take my coat off.”
Wallander told the officer on duty that he needed a patrol car to be sent out around noon to pick up Robert Modin. He gave the directions.
“Make sure it’s an undercover car,” he added. “That’s very important.”
A few minutes later, Höglund stepped into his office. She looked a little less tired today. He thought about asking her how things were going at home, but then as usual he wondered if it was the right moment. Instead, he told her about the potential eyewitness that Hansson had found and was bringing in as they spoke. He also told her about Robert Modin, who would perhaps be able to help them access the information in Falk’s computer.
“I remember him,” she said when Wallander had finished talking. “Do you think he’ll find something important in that computer?”
“I don’t think anything. But we have to know what Falk was up to. Who was he? It seems as if more and more people today are really electronic personalities.”
He went on to talk about the woman Hansson was bringing down to the station.
“She’ll be the first person we have who has actually seen anything,” Höglund said.
“We’ll keep our fingers crossed.”
She was leaning against the door frame. It was a newly acquired habit. Usually she came right in and sat in his visitor’s chair.
“I did some thinking last night,” she said. “I was watching TV, but I couldn’t concentrate. The kids had gone to bed.”
“Your husband?”
“My ex-husband. He’s in Yemen right now, I think. Anyway, I turned off the TV and sat at the kitchen table with a glass of water. I tried to picture everything that had happened, as simply as possible, stripped of unnecessary details.”
“That’s an impossible task,” Wallander said. “I mean the part about the details. You can’t know what’s unnecessary at this point.”
“You’re the one who’s taught me to weigh facts against each other and discard what’s less important.”
“What was your conclusion?”
“Certain things seem firmly established — for example that there is a connection between Falk and Sonja Hökberg. The electrical relay gives us no choice in that department. But there’s something about the timing of events that points to a possibility we haven’t yet discussed.”
“And what would that be?”
“That Tynnes Falk and Sonja Hökberg may not have had anything to do with each other directly.”
Wallander saw where she was going. It could be important.
“You mean they are only indirectly connected? Via someone else?”
“The motive may lie somewhere entirely removed from them both, since Falk was dead himself when Hökberg was burned to death. But the same person who killed her later moved his body.”
“That still doesn’t tell us what we’re looking for,” Wallander said.
“There’s no common denominator.”
“I’ve been thinking that maybe we have to start at the beginning,” Höglund said thoughtfully. “With Lundberg, the taxi driver.”
“Do we have anything on him?”
“His name doesn’t appear in any register we have. I’ve spoken to a few of his colleagues and his widow, and no one had anything bad to say about him. He drove his taxi all day and spent his time off with his family. A normal, peaceful Swedish existence that came to an unexpectedly brutal end. What hit me last night while I was sitting in the kitchen was that it seemed a bit too pretty. There isn’t a single smear anywhere. If you don’t have anything against it I’d like to keep digging in his life for a while.”
“That sounds good. We have to get to the bottom of this case in some way. Did he have kids?”
“Two boys. One of them lives in Malmö, the other still lives here in town. I was going to try to get hold of them today.”
“Go ahead. If for no other reason than that it would be useful to determine once and for all if Lundberg’s murder was a simple robbery or not.”
“Are we meeting today?”
“I’ll let you know if we do.”
She disappeared out the door. Wallander thought about what she had said, then went out to the lunchroom and helped himself to coffee. He picked up a copy of the day’s paper that was lying on a table. Once he got back to his office he started leafing through it absently, but he stopped when something caught his eye. An ad for a dating service, with the unoriginal name of “Computerdate.” Wallander read the ad thoroughly. Without hesitating he turned on his computer and quickly threw an ad together. He knew if he didn’t do it now he would never get around to it. No one would ever have to know. He could be completely anonymous. He tried to write something as simple and direct as possible: Policeman, divorced, one child, seeking companionship. Not marriage, but love. He chose the name Labrador rather than Old Dog. He printed it out and saved a copy on his hard drive. He put it in an envelope, wrote the address, and affixed a stamp. Then he put it in his pocket. Once he was done, he realized he actually felt excited about it. He would probably not get any replies, or if he did they would be ones he would immediately discard. But the sense of excitement was there. He could not deny it.
Then Hansson appeared in the doorway.
“She’s here,” he said. “Alma Högström, our witness.”
Wallander got up and followed him to one of the small conference rooms. Alma Högström was a fit-looking woman in her mid seventies. A German shepherd was lying on the floor next to her. The dog regarded them suspiciously. Wallander greeted her, sensing that she had dressed up for her visit to the police station.
“Your willingness to speak to the police on this matter is greatly appreciated,” he said. “Especially given that it is a Sunday.”
He marvelled at the stilted phrases that had just left his mouth. How could he still sound so dry and impersonal after all these years?
“If the police need any information one may have, surely it is one’s duty to try to be of assistance.”
She’s even worse than I am, he thought with a sigh. It’s like watching a bad film from the thirties.