Firewall - By Henning Mankell & Ebba Segerberg Page 0,133

No-one. She's dead."

The situation was getting out of hand. Wallander regretted not letting H枚glund handle this questioning. H枚kberg calmed his wife, who was sobbing. It was a horrible scene.

After a while he went on. "But she never talked about having been raped?"

"Never."

"And neither of you noticed anything out of the ordinary in her behaviour?"

"She was a hard person to gauge."

"In what way?"

"She kept to herself. She was often in a bad temper, which I suppose is normal for teenagers."

"Was she angry with you?"

"Mostly with her younger brother."

Wallander thought back to the only conversation he had ever had with the girl. She had complained then that her brother always got into her things.

"Let's go back to the years 1994 and 1995," Wallander said. "She had returned from England. Did you notice any sudden change at that time?"

Erik got up from his chair so violently that it fell backwards. "She came home one night, bleeding from her mouth and her nose. It was in February 1995. We asked her what had happened, but she wouldn't say. Her clothes were dirty and she was in shock. We never found out what happened. She said she had fallen. It was a lie of course. I realise that now, now that you come here and tell us she'd been raped. Why do we have to keep lying about this?"

Ruth started crying again. She tried to say something, but it was unintelligible. H枚kberg gestured to Wallander to follow him to the study.

"You won't get anything more from her."

"I only have a few more questions."

"Do you know who raped her?"

"No."

"But you suspect someone?"

"Yes, but I can't give you a name."

"Was he the same person who killed her?"

"I doubt it. But anything you can tell me may help to clarify the events that led to her death."

"It was towards the end of February," H枚kberg said, after a pause. "It snowed all day. By evening everything was white. And she came home bleeding. In the morning you could still see her blood on the snow."

Suddenly it was as if he was overcome by the same helplessness as his wife crying in the room next door.

"You have to get him. A person who can do something like this deserves whatever's coming to him."

"We will get the person who is responsible," Wallander said, "but we need your help."

"You have to understand my wife," H枚kberg said. "She's lost her daughter. How is she supposed to react to being told that Sonja was also raped?"

Wallander understood. "So it was the end of February 1995. Do you remember anything else? Did she have a boyfriend at the time?"

"We never knew who she associated with."

"Did any cars ever stop outside the house? Did you ever see her with a man?"

Anger flashed in H枚kberg's eyes. "A man? I thought you were talking about boyfriends?"

"That's what I meant."

"It was a grown man who did this to her?"

"I repeat: I can't give you that information."

H枚kberg lifted his hands defensively. "I've told you all I know. I should get back to my wife."

"Before I leave I'd like to take a look in Sonja's room again."

"You'll find it just as it was the last time. We haven't changed anything."

H枚kberg went into the living room and Wallander went upstairs. When he walked into the room he had the same feeling as before. It was not the room of a 19-year-old girl. He opened the wardrobe door to look at the poster. It was still there. The Devil's Advocate. Who is the Devil? he thought. Tynnes Falk worshipped his own image. And Sonja H枚kberg has a picture of the Devil in her bedroom. But he had never heard rumours of Satan worshippers in Ystad.

He shut the wardrobe door and was about to go downstairs when a boy appeared in the doorway.

"What are you doing here?" he said.

Wallander told him who he was. The boy looked at him, suspiciously.

"If you're police, you should be able to get the man who killed my sister."

"We're trying," Wallander said.

The boy didn't move. Wallander couldn't decide if he seemed scared or simply curious.

"You're Emil, aren't you?"

The boy said nothing.

"You must have liked your sister."

"Sometimes."

"Only sometimes?"

"Isn't that enough? Do you have to like people all the time?"

"No, you don't."

Wallander smiled, but the boy didn't smile back.

"I think I know one time when you liked her," Wallander said.

"When was that?"

"A couple of years ago. She came home and was hurt."

The boy shifted his feet. "How do you know that?"

"I'm a policeman," Wallander said. "I have to know. Did she