“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Did you have it written down anywhere?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
She paused before she replied.
“Yes.”
Wallander sensed that they were homing in on a crucial point. He proceeded carefully.
“Did anyone else know about this nickname?”
“My mother, but she’s basically senile.”
“No one else?”
“I have a girlfriend who lives in Austria. She knows it.”
“Do you exchange letters with her?”
“Yes. But the past few years it’s been mainly e-mail.”
“Do you sign those with your nickname?”
“Yes.”
Wallander sat back and took a minute to think.
“I don’t know exactly how this works,” he said, “but I take it those letters are stored in your computer somewhere.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“So if someone accessed them they would have been able to see your nickname, and perhaps guessed it might have been used as a password.”
“That’s impossible. To gain access to my letters they would need the password up front. It can’t happen the other way around.”
“But someone did manage to break into your computer and delete your files,” Wallander said.
She shook her head obstinately.
“Why would anyone do that?” she said.
“You’re the only person who can answer that question. It’s an important question, as I hope you realize. What did you have in your computer that someone could have wanted?”
“I never worked with classified information.”
“This is very important. You have to think carefully.”
“You don’t have to remind me.”
Wallander waited. She looked as though she was thinking hard.
“There was nothing,” she said finally.
“Perhaps there was something there that you didn’t realize was valuable?”
“And what would that have been?”
“Again, only you can tell me that.”
Her voice was very firm when she answered him.
“I pride myself on keeping all areas of my life, particularly my work, in meticulous order,” she said. “I am constantly cleaning and sorting files. And I never worked on particularly advanced projects, I’ve already told you that.”
Wallander also thought hard before proceeding.
“Did Falk ever come over and use your computer?” he asked.
“Why would he do that?”
“I have to ask. Could he have come here without your knowledge? He had keys to your apartment.”
“I would have noticed it on the computer. It’s hard to explain without getting too technical.”
“I see. But Falk was very good at these things. Isn’t it possible that he could have erased all traces of his activities? It’s always a question of who is better at staying a step ahead — the intruder or the investigator.”
“I still don’t see what the point would be of him using my computer.”
“Maybe he wanted to hide something. The cuckoo hides his eggs in other birds’ nests.”
“But why?”
“We don’t know why. It may also simply be that someone thought he hid something here. And now that Falk is dead, they need to make sure there isn’t something here that you would eventually discover.”
“Who would these people be?”
“That’s what I want to know.”
This is what must have happened, Wallander thought. There is no other reasonable explanation. There’s a lot of frenetic cleaning going on around this town. Something needs to be kept secret at any cost.
He repeated the words in his head. Something needs to be kept secret at any cost. That was the case in a nutshell. If only they could find the secret, the case would solve itself.
Wallander sensed that he was running out of time.
“Did Falk ever mention the number twenty?” he asked.
“Why is that important?”
“Just answer the question, please.”
“Not as far as I remember.”
Wallander got out his cell phone and called Nyberg. There was no answer. He called Irene and asked her to find him.
Siv Eriksson escorted him to the door.
“I’ll be sending over a forensic team,” he said. “I’d be grateful if you could avoid touching anything in your study. They might find some fingerprints.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said desperately. “Everything is gone. My whole career has vanished overnight.”
Wallander didn’t know how to comfort her. He recalled Erik Hökberg’s words about society’s vulnerability.
“Was Falk a religious man?” he asked.
Her surprise was genuine.
“He never said anything that would suggest such a thing.” Wallander had no more questions. He promised to be in touch. When he came out on the street he was at a loss. The person he most needed to talk to was Martinsson, but the question was if he should take Höglund’s advice. He wanted to confront him with what she had told him. Then he was overcome by fatigue. The betrayal was so hurtful and unexpected. He still had trouble accepting it, but deep down he knew it must be true.
Since it was still early, he decided to wait. Hopefully his anger would subside over the course of the day. First he would pay a visit to the Hökbergs. Just then he remembered something that he had forgotten to do. He drove to the video store that had been closed when he visited it last, went in, and rented the movie with Al Pacino that he wanted to see. He then continued on to the Hökberg house and stopped outside. Just as he was about to ring the bell, the door opened.
“I saw you pull up,” Erik Hökberg said. “You were also here about an hour ago, but you didn’t come in that time.”
“Something else came up that I had to attend to.”
They went inside. The house was quiet.
“I actually came to speak to your wife.”
“She’s resting in the bedroom upstairs. Or crying. Or both.”
Erik Hökberg’s face was ashen. His eyes were bloodshot.
“My son is back in school,” he said. “I think it’s the best thing for him.”
“We still don’t know who killed Sonja,” Wallander said. “But we’re optimistic that we’re closing in on whoever is responsible.”
“I always considered myself against the death penalty,” Hökberg said. “But I don’t know about that anymore. Just promise not to let me get close to whoever did this. I don’t know what I would do to him.”
Wallander promised, and Hökberg went upstairs to get his wife. Wallander walked around the living room while he waited. The silence was oppressive. It took about a quarter of an hour, then he heard footsteps on the stairs. Hökberg came down alone.
“She’s very tired,” he said. “But she’ll be down shortly.”
“I’m sorry that this conversation can’t wait.”
“Both she and I understand.”
They waited for her in silence. Then she turned up, barefoot and wearing black. Beside her husband she looked very small. Wallander shook her hand and expressed his condolences. She wobbled slightly then sat down. She reminded Wallander of Anette Fredman. Here was yet another mother who had lost a child. When he looked at her, he wondered how many times he had found himself in this situation. He was going to have to ask questions that were the equivalent of pouring salt in already painful wounds.
This situation was perhaps even worse than many of the others. Sonja Hökberg had not only been killed. Now he was about to confront them with the idea that she may also have been raped on an earlier occasion.
He groped around for a way to begin.
“In order to find Sonja’s killer, we have delved into the past. There is a particular incident that has come to our attention and that we need some more information about. You are probably the only people who can tell us about it.”