“It will be the twentieth in eight days,” Wallander said absently.
Modin and Martinsson kept bouncing ideas back and forth. They called up new numbers on the screen. Wallander was starting to get impatient, but he knew that what they were doing could be important.
The cell phone in his pocket rang. He walked over to the doorway and answered. It was Höglund.
“I may have found something,” she said.
Wallander walked out into the little hallway.
“What is it?”
“You know how I told you I was going to root around in Lundberg’s life?” she asked. “First I was going to talk to his sons. The oldest one’s name is Carl-Einar Lundberg. Suddenly it hit me that I had seen that name before. I just couldn’t remember where it was.”
The name meant nothing to Wallander.
“I started combing through the computer registers.”
“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?”
“Something interesting. Carl-Einar Lundberg was tried for a crime a number of years ago. I think it was during that time that 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.
“It might be something,” he said. “I guess it’s worth looking into, though I have to admit I have trouble fitting it into either Falk’s or Hökberg’s death.”
“All the same, I think I’ll follow it through,” Höglund said. “Like we agreed I would.”
The conversation was over. 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 totally lost.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Robert Modin stopped shortly after six o’clock. He was tired and complained of a headache.
But he wasn’t giving up. He squinted up at Martinsson and Wallander through his glasses and said he was more than happy to keep going the following day.
“But I need some time to think,” he said. “I need to come up with a plan of attack, and consult some of my friends.”
Martinsson arranged for Modin to be driven back to Löderup.
“Do you think he meant what he said?” Wallander asked Martinsson when they had returned to the police station.
“That he needed time to think and plan his course of action?” Martinsson said. “That’s what we do when we solve problems. Isn’t that what we asked him to do?”
“He sounded like an old doctor who had a patient with unusual symptoms. He said he was going to consult with friends.”
“That just means he’s going to get in touch with other hackers. Maybe via the Internet. Comparing it to a doctor and an unusual case of illness is actually quite accurate.”
Martinsson seemed to have gotten over the fact that they did not have official permission for working with Robert Modin. Wallander thought it was just as well not to go into that again.
Both Höglund and Hansson were in. Otherwise it was pleasantly empty at the station. Wallander thought in passing about the mountain of other work that was growing on his desk. Then he told the others to assemble for a quick meeting. Symbolically at least, they were at the end of a working week. What lay before them was as yet unclear.
“I talked to one of the canine units,” Hansson said. “An officer called Norberg. He’s actually in the process of getting a new dog, since Hercules is getting too old.”
“Isn’t that dog already dead?” Martinsson asked.
“Well, he’s done for at any rate. He’s blind, apparently.”
Martinsson burst into tired laughter.
“That would be something to write about in the papers,” he said. “The police and their blind search dogs.”
Wallander was not amused. He would miss the old dog, perhaps even 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 guess 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 asked.
Wallander slammed his hands 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 dead bodies in winter when it’s very cold.”
Wallander quickly proceeded to his next point.
“What about the van? Any news?”
“A Mercedes van was stolen in Ange a couple of weeks ago.”
Wallander had to think hard where that was.
“Where is Angle?”
“Outside Luleå,” Martinsson said.
“The hell it is,” Hansson broke in. “It’s closer to Sundsvall.”
Höglund got up and went over to the map on the wall. Hansson was right.
“It could be the one,” Hansson said. “Sweden isn’t 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 reports.”
The discussion was turned over to Höglund.
“Lundberg has two sons who are as unlike each other as could be. Nils-Emil, the one who lives in Malmö, works as 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. Apparently 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. The girl’s name was Englund. But he was never charged.”
“I remember that case,” Martinsson said. “It was a horrible incident.”
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, much to his own surprise.
“Were you in charge of that investigation?” Wallander asked.
Martinsson made a face.
“It was Svedberg.”
The room fell silent as they thought about their dead colleague.
“I haven’t made it through all the paperwork yet,” Höglund continued after a while. “So I don’t know why he wasn’t found guilty.”
“No one was ever found guilty of that crime,” Martinsson said. “Whoever did it went scot-free. We could never find another suspect. I remember quite clearly that Svedberg was convinced it was Lundberg. I’d never thought about the fact that he was Johan Lundberg’s son.”
“Even if that’s the case,” Wallander said, “does that really account for the fact that his father was robbed and killed? Or that Sonja Hökberg was subsequently burned to death? Or that Tynnes Falk’s fingers were cut off?”
“It was a brutal rape,” Höglund said. “You have to at least imagine a perpetrator out there who was capable of horrendous violence. This girl Englund was in the hospital a long time with severe injuries both to her head and other parts of her body.”
“Of course, we’ll look at this more closely,” Wallander said. “But I still don’t think he’ll turn out to have anything to do with this case. There’s something else behind all of this, even if we don’t yet know what that is.”