Firewall (6 page)

The strong wind chilled him as soon as he walked outside. He got into his car and started the engine, listening to the strange noises that were getting worse. Then he drove out to the townhouse where the Hökbergs lived. Martinsson's report had only given him the information that Hökberg's father was "self-employed". He didn't know what at. The small garden in the front was neat and tidy. He rang the doorbell. After a moment a man opened the door. Wallander knew at once that they had met before. He had a good memory for faces. But he didn't know when and where it had been. The man had also immediately recognised Wallander.

"It's you," he said. "I knew the police would be coming out, but I didn't expect it to be you."

He stepped to one side to let Wallander enter. He heard the sound of a television from somewhere. He could not remember where he had met this man before.

"I take it you remember me?" Hökberg said.

"Yes, I do," Wallander said. "But I'm having trouble placing you in the right context."

"Erik Hökberg doesn't ring a bell?"

Wallander searched his memory.

"And Sten Widén?"

Suddenly Wallander remembered. Widén, with his stud farm in Stjärnsund. And Erik. The three of them had shared a passion for the opera. Sten had been the most involved, but Erik was a childhood friend of his and had often sat around the record player with him as they listened to Verdi's operas.

"Yes, I remember now," Wallander said. "But your name wasn't Hökberg then, was it?"

"I took my wife's name. As a boy I was called Erik Eriksson."

Hökberg was a large man. The coat hanger he held out to Wallander looked small in his hand. Wallander had remembered him as thin, but now he was substantial. That must have been why it had been so hard to make the connection.

Wallander hung up his coat and followed Hökberg into the living room. There was a television in the middle of the room, but it was turned off. The sound was coming from another room. They sat down. Wallander tried to think of how to begin.

"It's horrible what's happened," Hökberg said. "Naturally I have no idea what got into her."

"Has she ever been violent before?"

"Never."

"What about your wife? Is she home?"

Hökberg seemed to have collapsed into a heap in his chair. Behind the rolls of fat in his face Wallander thought he could sense the outline of another face from a time that now seemed immeasurably distant.

"She took Emil and went to her sister in Höör. She couldn't stand to stay here. The reporters kept calling. They show no mercy. They called in the middle of the night, some of them."

"I'm afraid I have to speak to her."

"I know. I've told her the police would reach her there."

Wallander wasn't sure how to proceed. "You and your wife must have talked about what happened."

"She doesn't understand it any more than I do. It was a total shock."

"You have a good relationship with Sonja?"

"There were never any problems."

"And between her and her mother?"

"The same. They had fights from time to time but only stuff you would expect. There have never been any problems, at least as long as I've known her."

Wallander furrowed his brow.

"What do you mean by that?"

"You knew she was my stepdaughter?"

Wallander was sure that this had not been in the report. He would have remembered it.

"Ruth and I had Emil together," Hökberg said. "Sonja was about two when I came on the scene. That was 17 years ago. Ruth and I met at a Christmas party."

"Who was Sonja's father?"

"His name was Rolf. He never cared about her. He and Ruth were never married."

"Do you know where he is?"

"He died a few years ago. Drank himself to death."

Wallander looked for a pen in his coat pocket. He had already realised that he had forgotten both his glasses and notebook. There was a pile of old papers on the glass table.

"Do you mind if I tear off a piece?"

"Can't the police afford office supplies any more?"

"That's a good question. As it happens I've forgotten my notebook."

Wallander used a magazine as a pad. He saw that it was an English-language financial magazine.

"Do you mind if I ask you what you do for a living?"

The answer was a surprise.

"I play the stock market."

"I see. What does that entail?"

"I trade stocks, options, foreign currency. I also place some bets, mainly English cricket games. Sometimes American baseball."

"So you mean you gamble?"

"Not the usual kind. I never place bets on horses. But I suppose you can call trading stocks a form of gambling."

"And you do all this from home?"

Hökberg got up and gestured for Wallander to follow him. When he walked into the adjoining room Wallander paused in the doorway. There was not simply one television in this room, there were three. Various numbers flashed past in a dark ribbon on the bottom of the screens. On one wall there was a series of clocks showing the time in various parts of the world. It was like walking into an air-traffic control tower.

"People always say technology has made the world smaller," Hökberg said. "I think that's debatable. But the fact that it's made my world bigger is beyond dispute. From this flimsy townhouse at the edge of Ystad, I can reach all the markets in the whole world. I can connect to betting centres in London or Rome. I can buy options on the Hong Kong market and sell American dollars in Jakarta."

"Is it really so simple?"

"Not altogether. You need permits, good contacts and knowledge. But when I step into this room I'm in the middle of the world. Whenever I choose. Strength and vulnerability go hand in hand."

They returned to the living room.

"I would like to see Sonja's room," Wallander said.

Hökberg accompanied him up the stairs. They walked past a room that Wallander assumed belonged to their boy, Emil. Hökberg pointed to a door.

"I'll wait downstairs," he said. "If you don't need me, that is."

"No, I'll be fine."

Wallander heard Hökberg's heavy steps going down the stairs. He pushed open the door. There was a sloping ceiling in the room and one of the windows was ajar. A thin curtain wafted in the draught. Wallander knew from long experience that the first impression was often the most valuable. A closer examination could reveal dramatic details that were not immediately visible, but the first impression was something he always came back to.

A person lived here in this room. She was the one he was looking for. The bed was made, heaped with pink and flowery cushions. On one of the walls there was a shelf full of teddy bears. There was a mirror on the wardrobe door and a thick rug on the floor. There was a desk by the window, but there was nothing on its top. Wallander stood in the doorway for a long time and looked into the room. This was where Sonja Hökberg lived. He entered the room, kneeled by the bed and looked underneath it. There was a thin covering of dust everywhere except in one spot where an object had left an outline of itself. Wallander shivered. He suspected it was the spot where the hammer had been found. He got up and opened the drawers of the desk. None of them was locked. There weren't even any locks. He didn't know exactly what he was looking for. Maybe a diary or some photographs. But there was nothing in the desk that caught his attention. He sat down on the bed and thought about his meeting with the girl.

There was something that had struck him as soon as he saw her room from the doorway.

Something which didn't add up. Hökberg and her room didn't go together. He couldn't imagine her here among all the pink cushions and the teddy bears. But it was her room. He tried to work out what it could mean. Which was closer to the truth – the indifferent girl he had met at the police station, or the room where she had lived and hidden a hammer under her bed?

Many years ago Rydberg had taught him how to listen: each room has its own life and breath. You have to listen for it. A room can tell you many secrets about the person who lives there.

At first Wallander had been sceptical about Rydberg's advice, but in time he had come to realise that Rydberg had imparted a crucial piece of knowledge.

Wallander's head was starting to ache, especially in his temples. He got up and opened the wardrobe door. There were clothes on hangers and shoes on the floor. On the inside of the door was a poster from a film called
The Devil's Advocate.
The star was Al Pacino. Wallander remembered him from
The Godfather.
He shut the wardrobe door and sat on the chair by the desk. That gave him a new angle from which to view the room.

There's something missing, he thought. He remembered what Linda's room had looked like when she was a teenager. There had been some stuffed animals of course. But above all there were the pictures of her idols, who changed from time to time but were always there in some form or another.

There was nothing like that in Hökberg's room. She was 19 and all she had was a movie poster inside her wardrobe.

Wallander remained there for a few more minutes, then he left the room and walked back down the stairs. Hökberg looked at him carefully.

"Did you find anything?"

"I just wanted to have a look around."

"What's going to happen to her?"

Wallander shook his head. "She'll be tried as an adult. She's confessed to the crime. They're not going to be easy on her."

Hökberg didn't say anything. Wallander could see he was pained.

Wallander wrote down the number for Hökberg's sister-in-law in Höör. Then he left the townhouse and drove back to the station, feeling worse and worse. He was going to go home after the press conference and crawl into bed.

As he walked into reception, Irene waved him over. Wallander saw that she was pale.

"Something's happened?" he said.

"I don't know," she said. "They were looking for you, and as usual you didn't have your mobile with you."

"Who was looking for me?"

"Everyone."

Wallander lost his patience. "What do you mean 'everyone'? Give me some names, dammit!"

"Martinsson. And Lisa."

Wallander went straight to Martinsson's office. Hansson was there.

"What's happened?"

Martinsson said: "Hökberg has escaped."

Wallander stared at him in disbelief. "Escaped?"

"Gone. It happened about an hour ago. We've put all available personnel on the search, but she's disappeared into thin air."

Wallander looked at his colleagues. Then he took off his coat and sat down.

CHAPTER SIX

It didn't take Wallander long to grasp what must have happened. Someone had been careless, someone had disregarded the most basic security measures. But above all someone had forgotten the fact that Sonja Hökberg was not the innocent young girl she appeared to be, that she had committed a brutal murder only a couple of days before.

It was easy to reconstruct the chain of events. Hökberg was to be moved from one room to another. She had met her lawyer and was to be brought back to the holding cell. While she was waiting to be moved she had asked to go to the toilet. When she came back out she saw that the officer on guard had turned his back and was talking to someone in one of the offices. She had simply walked the other way. No-one had tried to stop her. She had walked straight out through the front hall. No-one had seen her. Not Irene, not anyone else. After about five minutes the officer in charge of her had gone into the toilet and discovered that she was gone. He had then looked into the room where she had talked to her lawyer, and once he had established she was not there either, alerted security. At which point Hökberg had had ten minutes to do her disappearing act.

Wallander groaned and felt his headache worsen.

"I've alerted all available personnel," Martinsson said. "And I called her father. You had just left the house. Did you discover anything that might tell us where she might be heading?"

"Her mother is staying with her sister in Höör." He gave Martinsson the number.

"She can hardly be planning to go there on foot," Hansson said.

"She has a driving licence," Martinsson said, with the telephone receiver pressed against his ear. "She could hitch a lift, steal a car."

"We have to talk to Persson," Wallander said. "And pronto. Juvenile or not, she's going to tell us everything she knows."

Hansson got up to leave and almost collided with Holgersson who had only just learned of the disappearance. While Martinsson was talking on the phone with Hökberg's mother, Wallander told Holgersson how the escape had happened.

"This is simply unacceptable," she said. She was furious.

Wallander liked that about her. The previous chief, Björk, would always worry about his own reputation at times like these.

"These things are not supposed to happen," Wallander said. "But they do. What matters is to track her down. Then we'll have to go over our security procedures and work out who's responsible for what went wrong in this case."

"Do you think there's a danger of more violence?"

Wallander thought for a moment. He saw an image of Hökberg's room, the stuffed animals sitting all in a row.

"We don't know enough about her at this point," he said. "But you couldn't rule it out."

Martinsson put the phone down.

"That was her mother," he said. "And I've talked to our colleagues in Höör. They know what to do."

"I'm not sure any of us knows that," Wallander said. "But I want that girl picked up as soon as possible."

"Was the escape planned?" Holgersson said.

"Not according to the officer in charge," Martinsson said. "I think she took advantage of the situation."

"Oh, it was planned," Wallander said. "She was waiting for the right moment, that's all. She wanted to get away from here. Has anyone spoken to her lawyer? Could he be of any help?"

"I doubt if anyone's thought of that yet," Martinsson said. "He left the station when he had finished talking to her."

Wallander got up. "I'll speak to him."

"What about the press conference?" Holgersson said. "What should we do about that?"

Wallander looked at his watch. It was 11.20 a.m.

"We'll do it as planned and we'll have to tell them what's happened, even if we would rather not."

"I suppose I should be there," Holgersson said.

Wallander didn't answer. He went back to his office, his head throbbing. Every time he had to swallow it hurt.

I should be in bed, he thought. Not running around after teenage girls who murder taxi drivers.

He found some tissues in a desk drawer and dabbed himself down as well as he could. He had a temperature and was sweating profusely. He called Hökberg's lawyer.

"This is unexpected," Lötberg said when Wallander had finished.

"What this is is a problem," Wallander said. "Do you have any information that might help us?"

"I don't think so. It was hard to make a connection with her. She seemed very calm on the surface, but as to what was going on underneath I have no idea."

"Did she mention a boyfriend? Anyone she wanted to see?"

"No."

"No-one?"

"She asked about Persson."

Wallander paused. "She didn't ask about her parents?"

"As a matter of fact, no."

This struck Wallander as odd, like the impression her room had given him. The feeling was growing that something didn't add up about Sonja Hökberg.

"I'll be in touch, of course, if she contacts me," Lötberg said.

Wallander was left with the image of her room in his head. It was a child's room, he thought. Not a 19-year-old's room. It was still the room of a 10-year-old, as if the room had stopped ageing even though the girl herself was still growing.

He couldn't develop this insight any further, but he knew it was important.

It took Martinsson less than half an hour to arrange the meeting with Eva Persson. Wallander was shocked when he saw her. She was short and looked no older than 12. He studied her hands and tried, without success, to picture her holding a knife and plunging it into the chest of her victim. But he soon recognised that there was something in her that reminded him of Hökberg. The look in her eyes, the same indifference.

Martinsson left them alone. Wallander would have liked Höglund there, but she was organising the search for Hökberg.

Persson's mother looked as if she had been crying. Wallander felt sorry for her. He shuddered to think what she was going through.

He came to the point at once. "Sonja has run away. I want you to tell me where you think she could have gone. Think carefully before you say anything, and make sure you tell me the whole truth. Do you understand?"

Persson nodded.

"Where do you think she's gone?"

"Home, probably. Where else would she have gone?"

His headache was making him impatient. "If she had gone home, we would already have found her," he said, raising his voice a little. The mother seemed to retreat into herself.

"I don't know where she is."

Wallander opened his notebook. "Who are her friends? Who does she normally go around with? Does she know anyone who has a car?"

"It's normally just her and me."

"What about her other friends?"

"There's Kalle, I suppose."

"What's his last name?"

"Ryss."

"His name is Kalle Ryss?"

"Yes."

"I don't want a single lie out of you, do you get that?"

"What the fuck are you screaming at me for, you old bastard?"

Wallander almost exploded, perhaps objecting most to being called "old".

"Just tell me who he is."

"He's a surfer. He goes to Australia a lot, but he's at home at the moment, working for his dad."

"What does his dad do?"

"He has a hardware store."

"And he's friends with Sonja?"

"They used to go out."

Persson was unable to think of anyone else that Hökberg might have contacted. She didn't know where she would be likely to go. In a last attempt to get some more information, Wallander turned to the mother, but she said she knew very little about Sonja.

"You must have known something about her; she was your daughter's best friend."

"I never liked her."

Persson swung round and hit her mother in the face. It happened so fast that Wallander had no time to catch her arm. The mother started screaming and the girl went on hitting her and yelling obscenities. She bit Wallander's hand, but he managed to drag them apart.

"Get rid of the old hag!" Persson yelled. "I don't want to see her any more!"

Wallander lost control. He slapped Persson. Hard. The girl was knocked to the ground. Wallander quickly left the room with his palm stinging. Holgersson came hurrying down the corridor and stared at him.

"What happened in there?"

Wallander didn't answer. He looked at his hand. It had turned red and was hurting. Neither one of them saw the journalist who had arrived early for the press conference. During the chaos of the last few moments he had reached the door unnoticed. He snapped two, three, four pictures. A headline was already taking shape in his mind.

The press conference started half an hour late. Holgersson had been clinging to the hope that a patrol would spot Hökberg. Wallander, who had been harbouring no illusions about the likelihood of this happening, had wanted to get started on time, in part also because his flu was now breaking out in full force.

He convinced her at last to go ahead. The reporters were only going to get irritated and make things more difficult for them.

"What do you want me to tell them?" she said.

"Nothing," Wallander said. "I'll handle it. I just want you to be there, that's all."

He excused himself and went to the toilet. He rinsed his face in cold water, then returned to the large conference room. He flinched when he saw how many reporters were there. He walked up to the podium with Holgersson. They sat down and Wallander looked out over the sea of faces. He recognised a good many. Some he knew by name, but some were complete strangers.

What should I tell them? he wondered. Even when you think you know what you are going to say it never comes out exactly the way you had imagined.

Holgersson welcomed the reporters and introduced Wallander.

I hate this, he thought bitterly. I don't just dislike it. All these meetings with the media. I know they are a fact of life, but I hate them.

He counted silently to three before he began.

"Last Tuesday evening in Ystad, a taxi driver was brutally assaulted and robbed. As you know, he died from the wounds that were inflicted. Two people have since been charged with the crime and they have both confessed. One of the assailants is a juvenile and consequently we will not be releasing any names at this press conference."

One of the reporters raised his hand.

"Isn't it true that the assailants were both women?"

"I'll get there, don't worry" Wallander said.

The reporter was young and pushy. "This press conference was supposed to start at 1 p.m. and it's already past 1.30. Don't you realise that we have deadlines to meet?"

Wallander ignored this question.

"This case is therefore a homicide," he said. "There's no reason not to disclose that this was an unusually savage killing. It is therefore comforting to know that we were able to resolve the investigation as rapidly as we did."

Then he took a deep breath. He felt as if he were diving into a pool without knowing how deep it was.

"Regrettably there has been a complication. One of the assailants has escaped. We have, I should add, every expectation of catching her shortly."

At first there was complete silence in the room. Then the questions burst from all sides.

"What's her name?"

Wallander looked over at Holgersson, who nodded.

"Sonja Hökberg."

"Where was she being detained?"

"Here at the police station."

"How could that happen?"

"We're conducting an inquiry into the matter."

"What does that mean?"

"Exactly what you think it means. That we're looking into how Hökberg was able to escape from custody."

"Would it be correct to describe her as dangerous?"

Wallander hesitated. "We don't know yet if she poses a threat to the public."

"She either poses a threat or she doesn't, surely? Which is it?"

Wallander was on the verge of losing his temper, for the umpteenth time in this one day. He wanted very much to bring proceedings to a close and go home and go to bed.

"Next question."

The reporter was not going to give up. "I want a definite answer. Is she dangerous or not?"

"I've given you my answer. Next question."

"Is she armed?"