And now Robert Modin was in the same situation.
Martinsson had established that some Brazilian entrepreneurs were responsible for the installation and upkeep of the server called Vesuvius. But they had not yet identified the person who had written to Robert, even if Wallander suspected it to be “C.” Who this person was, or if there was even a group of individuals hiding behind the letter, remained unknown.
Martinsson returned to the computers upstairs. Wallander had encouraged him to keep talking to Robert’s hacker friends in Rättvik and California. They might even know about a possible hiding place.
Wallander walked to the window and looked out. A strange silence seemed to accompany the fog. Wallander had never experienced it anywhere except here in Scania in October and November, before winter struck. The landscape seemed to be holding its breath when the fog came in.
Wallander heard a car pull up. He went to the front door and opened it. It was Höglund. She introduced herself to Axel Modin while Wallander walked to the stairs and asked Martinsson to come down. Then they all sat down around the kitchen table. Axel Modin hovered in the background, attending to his wife and her debilitating anxiety.
For Wallander, nothing else mattered right now except the task of finding Robert. Everything else was unimportant. It was not enough that they put patrol cars on the job; they needed to send out a regional alert. All nearby police districts should be involved in the search. Wallander gave this task to Martinsson.
“We don’t know where he is,” Wallander said. “But he fled in a state of panic. We can’t know for sure the extent of the threat against him, and we don’t know if his movements were actually being monitored by someone, but for now that is what we’re going to assume to be the case.”
“They’re very good, whoever they are,” Martinsson said from the doorway with the telephone receiver pressed against his ear. “I know he was conscientious about erasing his tracks.”
“That must not have been enough,” Wallander said. “Especially if he copied material and kept working on it through the night after he got home. After he had said good-bye to us.”
“I haven’t found anything to indicate that,” Martinsson said. “But you may be right.”
Once Martinsson had seen to the regional alert, they decided to establish their temporary headquarters at the house. It was possible that Robert would contact someone here. Höglund would go down to Sandhammaren with a few cars while Wallander went to Backåkra.
On the way out to the cars, Wallander noticed that Höglund was carrying her gun. Once she had left, Wallander went back up to the house. Axel Modin was sitting in the kitchen.
“I’d like the shotgun,” Wallander said. “And some rounds of buckshot.”
Wallander could see the anxiety flare up in Modin’s face.
“It’s a precautionary measure,” Wallander said in an attempt to allay his fears.
Modin got up and left the kitchen. When he came back he had the shotgun and a box of ammunition with him.
Wallander was back in Martinsson’s car, headed to Backåkra. Cars were crawling along the highway. Headlights emerged from the fog and were swallowed up again. The whole time, he was racking his brains to figure out where Robert Modin must have gone. Had he left without a thought in his head, or did he have a plan? Wallander realized he wasn’t going to get anywhere. He didn’t know Robert well enough.
He almost missed the turnoff for Backåkra. He turned sharply and sped up, even though he was now on a smaller road. But he didn’t expect to meet any other cars here. The grounds as well as the house were owned by the Swedish Academy, the elite group of writers and intellectuals responsible for awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature, and it was probably deserted this time of year. He got out of the car when he reached the parking lot and took the shotgun with him. He heard a foghorn in the distance, and he could smell the sea. Visibility was only about one meter. He walked around the parking lot but didn’t see any other cars. He walked up to the house and its outer buildings, but it was thoroughly locked. What am I doing here? he wondered. If there’s no car, then there’s no Robert either. But something drove him onward toward the fields. He went to the right, where he knew he would find the small meditation garden. A bird squawked nearby. The fog made it impossible to judge distances accurately. He reached the ring of stones that bordered the meditation garden. Now he could hear the sea clearly. No one was there, and no one seemed to have been there, either. He got out his phone and called Höglund. She was in Sandhammaren. There were still no traces of Modin’s car.
“The fog is very localized,” she told him. “Air traffic is normal at Sturup. A bit north of Brösarp everything is clear.”
“I don’t think he’s gone that far,” Wallander said. “I think he’s still in the area. In fact, I’m sure of it.”
He ended the conversation and started back. Suddenly something caught his attention. He listened. A car was approaching the parking lot. He concentrated intensely. Robert Modin had fled in a Volkswagen Golf sedan. But the engine sound from this car sounded different. Instinctively he loaded the shotgun. Then he pressed on. The engine noise stopped. Wallander waited. A car door was opened, but not closed. Wallander was sure it was not Modin who had just arrived. Perhaps it was a caretaker coming to see to the place. Or to find out who it was who had just arrived, to make sure it wasn’t a burglar. Wallander thought about getting closer but something warned him not to. What it was he couldn’t say. He left the little path he was on and made a wide circle back, heading toward the other end of the parking lot. From time to time he stopped. I would have heard someone unlock the door and enter the house, he thought.
But it’s too quiet out there. Much too quiet.
He looked at the house again. He was directly behind it. He took a few steps back and the house disappeared from view into the gray fog. Then he walked around toward the parking lot. He arrived at the fence, and climbed over with some difficulty. Then he slowly examined the parking lot. Visibility was even worse now. He thought that it was probably a bad idea to get too close to Martinsson’s car. It was better to go around it. He stayed close to the fence so he wouldn’t lose his sense of direction.
He stopped short when he reached the entrance to the parking lot. There was the car. Or rather, the van. At first he wasn’t sure what it was, but then it dawned on him that he was looking at a dark-blue Mercedes van.
He took a few quick steps back into the fog and listened. His heart was beating faster. He undid the safety catch on the shotgun. The door to the driver’s side had been open. He was standing completely still now. There was no doubt in his mind that this was the van they had been looking for. It was the same one that had brought Falk’s body back to the cash machine. And now it was out in the fog looking for Modin.
But Modin isn’t here, Wallander thought.
Then it suddenly occurred to him that they could just as well be looking for him. If they had seen Modin leave the house, they could also have been observing him. He tried to think back to his drive here. No car had overtaken him, but hadn’t there been a pair of headlights in his rearview mirror?
His cell phone rang in his pocket. Wallander jumped and answered as quickly as he could with a low voice. But it wasn’t Martinsson or Höglund. It was Elvira Lindfeldt.