“He came from a northerly direction,” Elofsson said. “From Malmö in toward Ystad. At least three times.”
“When was he here last?”
“Just before I called you. I tried your regular phone first. You must be a deep sleeper.”
Wallander ignored his last comment.
“Tell me in detail what happened.”
“You know how it is. It’s only when they come by the second time that you really notice them.”
“What kind of a car was it?”
“A navy blue Mazda sedan.”
“Did he slow down when he passed by?”
“I don’t know if he did the first time around, but definitely the second.”
El Sayed broke in for the first time.
“He slowed down already that first time.”
The comment clearly irritated Elofsson. Probably because he didn’t want his colleague showing him up.
“But he never stopped?”
“No.”
“Did he see you?”
“Not the first time. But probably on his second time around.”
“What happened after that?”
“He came back a third time after about twenty minutes, but he didn’t slow down.”
“He was probably just checking that you were still here. Could you see if there was more than one person in the car?”
“We talked about that. We have no way of knowing for sure, but we think it was just one person.”
“Did you check in with your colleagues at Runnerstrom Square?”
“They haven’t seen it.”
Wallander found that puzzling. If someone was keeping a check on Falk’s apartment, he should also be interested in his office.
He thought about it. The only explanation he could find was that, whoever the person in the car was, he didn’t know about the existence of the office. That is, if the officers on duty there hadn’t been sleeping. Wallander didn’t want to rule out that possibility at this point.
Elofsson turned around and gave Wallander a note with the license-plate number written on it.
“I take it you’ve already had this number checked out?”
“We tried, but the computer system was down.”
Wallander held the note up so he could read it with the help of the streetlight. MLR 331. He memorized the number.
“When did they think they could access the registers again?”
“They couldn’t say. Maybe by tomorrow morning.”
Wallander shook his head.
“We need to know this as soon as possible. When do your shifts end?”
“At six o’clock.”
“Before you head home I want you to write up a report on this and give it to Hansson or Martinsson. Then they’ll take care of it.”
“What do we do if he comes back?”
“He won’t,” Wallander said. “Not as long as he knows you’re here.”
“Should we intervene in any way in the unlikely event that he comes back?”
“No. He hasn’t committed a crime. But call me. Use my cell-phone number.”
He wished them luck, then walked back to Jörgen Krabbes Way. He drove down to Runnerström Square. Things there were not quite as bad as he imagined. Only one of the officers was asleep. They hadn’t seen any navy blue Mazdas.
“Keep a close watch,” Wallander said, giving them the license-plate number.
On his way back to his car he remembered he still had Setterkvist’s keys in his pocket. Without really knowing why, he entered the building and walked all the way up to the top floor. Before unlocking the door he pressed his ear to it and listened. He walked in and turned on the light, looking around the room in the same way that he had the first time he was there. Was there anything he hadn’t noticed that time? Something that both he and Nyberg had overlooked? He found nothing. He sat down at the computer and stared at the dark screen.
Robert Modin had talked about the number 20. Wallander had sensed intuitively that the boy was onto something. In the stream of numbers that were a nonsensical jumble to Martinsson and himself, Robert Modin had been able to see a pattern. The only thing Wallander could think of was that the 20th of October was approaching, and that the number 20 was the first part of the year 2000. But the question essentially remained unsolved. What did it mean? And did it mean anything for the investigation?
Suddenly the phone rang.
Wallander jumped. The sound rang out eerily in the room. He stared at the black phone and finally lifted the receiver on the seventh ring.
He heard static, as if it were a long distance call, and he strained to hear something on the other end. There was someone there.
Wallander said hello once, then a second time. The only thing he heard was the sound of breathing somewhere deep inside the buzz of static.
Then there was a clicking sound and the connection was lost. Wallander hung up. His heart was racing. He had heard that sound before, when he had listened to Falk’s messages.
There was someone there, he thought. Someone calling to talk to Falk. But Falk is gone. He’s dead.
Suddenly he thought of another possibility. Someone could be calling to talk to him. Had anyone seen him enter the building and walk up to Falk’s apartment?
He remembered how he had stopped and turned around on the sidewalk earlier in the evening. As if he was expecting there to be someone behind him, observing him.
His anxiety returned. Up until now, he had been able to repress the knowledge that only a few days ago someone had tried to kill him. Höglund’s words came back to him: he should take care.
He got up from the chair and walked over to the door. But he didn’t hear anything.
He walked back to the desk. Without thinking about it, he lifted the keyboard.
There was a postcard lying underneath it.
He directed the lamp over it and put on his glasses. The card was old and the color had started to fade. It was a picture of a tropical bay. There were palm trees, a pier, small fishing boats in the water. Behind the shoreline, a row of tall buildings. He turned the card over and saw it was addressed to Tynnes Falk at his Apelbergsgatan address. So much for Siv Eriksson receiving all his mail. Had she lied to him, or did she not know about this other mail? There was no message on the card, just the letter “C.” Wallander studied the postmark. The stamp was almost completely torn off, but he thought he could discern the letters / and d. That probably meant the other letters were vowels. But he couldn’t tell what they were, nor could he read the date. There was nothing printed on the postcard to say where the picture had been taken. Wallander thought back to an unhappy and chaotic trip he had once taken to the West Indies. The palm trees were the same, but the city in this picture was foreign to him.
He studied the “C” again. That was the same as the C in Falk’s diary. It must be a name. Falk had known who it was and had saved the postcard. In this bare room that contained nothing beyond the computer and a blueprint of a power substation, there had been this postcard. Wallander tucked the card into his breast pocket. Then he lifted the computer monitor to see if there was anything under that, but there was nothing. He lifted the phone. Nothing.
He looked around for another minute but finally turned out the light and left.