Firewall - By Henning Mankell & Ebba Segerberg Page 0,145

had left. Wallander stood up.

"Did you see which way he went?"

"He went north."

"One other thing. Did you see anyone when you went out to get the paper? Or when you fed the chickens?"

"Who would I have seen? And in this weather?"

"There may have been a car parked somewhere. Or a car driving past."

"There was no-one here."

Wallander nodded to Martinsson. "We have to look at his room," Wallander said.

Axel Modin had buried his face in his hands. "Can someone explain to me what's going on?"

"Not right now," Wallander said. "But we're going to try to find your son."

"He was frightened," Axel Modin said softly. "I have never seen him so frightened. He was as frightened as his mother sometimes gets."

Wallander and Martinsson went upstairs. Martinsson pointed to the shotgun leaning against the banister. The flickering screens of two monitors greeted them in Robert's room. There were clothes all over the floor and the waste-paper basket next to the desk was overflowing.

"What was it that happened shortly before 9.00 this morning?" Wallander said. "Something scared him. He sent us the e-mail and then ran. He was desperate, literally afraid for his life. He wanted the shotgun for protection. He looks out the windows and then takes the car."

Martinsson picked up the mobile that was lying next to the computers. It was switched off.

"Maybe someone called," he said. "Or else he may have made a call himself and was told something that frightened him. Too bad he didn't take the phone with him when he left."

"If he sent us an e-mail, he may also have received one. He told us that someone had traced him and that he needed our help."

"But he didn't wait for us."

"Either something else happened after he e-mailed us, or he seriously didn't want to wait any longer."

Martinsson sat at the desk. "We'll leave that one for now," he said, referring to the smaller of the two computers.

Wallander didn't ask how Martinsson could determine which of the two was more important. For the time being he was dependent on his expertise. Wallander didn't like it when one of his colleagues knew more than he did.

While Martinsson started typing on the keyboard Wallander looked around the room. The rain was whipping against the window. On one wall there was a large poster with a carrot on it. It was the only thing that stood out in a room devoted to the electronic sphere. There were computer books, diskettes and cables. Some of the computer cords were wrapped round each other like a nest of vipers. There was a modem, a printer, a television and two video recorders. Wallander walked over to the desk and bent down. What could Robert have seen through this window as he was sitting at the desk? There was a road far in the distance. He could have seen a car, Wallander thought. He looked around the room again, lifting things carefully until he found a pair of binoculars under some papers. He focused them on the distant landscape. A raven flew across his line of vision, close to the house, and Wallander flinched involuntarily. Otherwise there was nothing. A tumbledown fence, trees, and a narrow road that snaked through the fields.

"How's it going?" he said.

Martinsson mumbled something. Wallander put on his glasses and looked at the pieces of paper closest to the computers. Robert Modin's handwriting was hard to read. There were some half-finished equations and phrases, without beginning or end. The word "delay" occurred several times. Sometimes it was underlined, other times it appeared with a question mark beside it. Wallander kept looking. On another page Robert had written "Completion date of programming?" and then: "Insider necessary?" A lot of question marks, Wallander thought. He's been searching for answers just as we have.

"Look here," Martinsson said, suddenly. "He got an e-mail. Then he sent his message to us."

Wallander leaned in and read the message. You have been traced. Nothing else.

"Was there anything later?" Wallander said.

"No messages since then."

"Who sent the message?"

"The source is hidden behind all these scrambled codes. This is someone who didn't want to say who he was."

"But where did it come from?"

"The server is Vesuvius," Martinsson said. "We can certainly have it traced, but it may take a while."

"You don't think it's here in Sweden?"

"I doubt it."

"Vesuvius is a volcano in Italy," Wallander mused. "Can that be where it came from? What happens if we reply to the message?"

"I'm not sure. We can try." Martinsson prepared a return message. "What do