Firewall - By Henning Mankell & Ebba Segerberg Page 0,154
to eye on this much. You realise you're involved in a very dangerous business. From now on you need to do as I say. By the way, has anyone brought you any food?" he asked. "I know you have unusual food preferences."
"A tofu pie would be nice," Modin said. "And some carrot juice."
Wallander called Irene. "Could you get us a tofu pie and a carrot juice, please?"
"Can you repeat that?"
Ebba would not have asked any questions, Wallander thought. "Tofu pie."
"What on God's earth is that?"
"Food. It's vegetarian. Please try to get it as quickly as you can."
He hung up before Irene had a chance to ask anything else.
"Let's start by talking about what you saw from your window," Wallander said. "At some point you discovered a car out there."
"There are never any cars on that road."
"You took out your binoculars for a closer look."
"Everything I did you already know."
"No," Wallander said. "I know part of it. What did you see?"
"A dark blue car."
"Was it a Mercedes?"
"I don't know the first thing about cars."
"Was it big? Did it look like a van?"
"Yes."
"And there was someone standing next to the car?"
"That was what scared me. When I looked through the binoculars I saw a man who was looking at me with some binoculars of his own."
"Could you see his face?"
"I was pretty scared."
"I know. What about his face?"
"He had dark hair."
"What was he wearing?"
"A darkish raincoat. I think."
"Did you see anything else? Had you ever seen him before?"
"No. And I don't remember noticing anything else."
"You left. Could you tell if he followed you?"
"I don't think he did. There's a tiny road just a little bit past our house. I don't think he saw it."
"Then what did you do?"
"I had sent you the e-mail, but I didn't feel I could go to Runnerstr枚ms Torg. I didn't know what to do. At first I was planning to go to Copenhagen. But I didn't feel up to driving down to Malm枚. I'm not a driver. Something could have happened."
"So you simply drove into Ystad. What did you do then?"
"Nothing."
"You stayed in the car until some policemen found you?"
"Yes."
Wallander tried to think about where they should go from here. He wanted Martinsson to be present, as well as Alfredsson. He got up and left the room. Irene was at her desk. She shook her head when she saw him.
"How is the food coming on?" he asked sternly.
"Sometimes I think all of you are nuts."
"That's probably true, but I have a boy back there who doesn't eat hamburgers. I guess there are people like that. And he needs food."
"I called Ebba," Irene said. "She said she would take care of it."
That put him in a better mood. If she had talked to Ebba then everything would be taken care of.
"I'd like to speak to Martinsson and Alfredsson as soon as possible," he said. "Please get hold of them."
At that moment Holgersson hurried in through the front doors.
"More shooting?" she said. "That's what I heard. What happened?"
Briefing Holgersson right now was the last thing he needed, but Wallander knew he had no choice. He rapidly filled her in on the day's events.
"Have you sent out an alert to the neighbouring districts?"
"It's been taken care of."
"When can we have a meeting about this?"
"As soon as everyone comes back in."
"It feels to me as if this investigation is getting out of hand."
"We're not quite at that point," Wallander said, and didn't bother to hide his annoyance. "But feel free to relieve me of my responsibilities if you like. Hansson is the one who's been in charge of the search operation."
She had a few more questions, but Wallander had already turned his back and started walking away.
Martinsson and Alfredsson came in at 5 p.m. Wallander and Modin sat down with them in one of the smaller conference rooms. Hansson had called to say there was still no sign of the man who had vanished into the fog. No-one knew where H枚glund had got to. Wallander barricaded the door. Modin's computers were up and running.
"We're going to go through everything from the beginning," Wallander said.
"I'm not sure we can do that yet," Alfredsson said. "There are too many things we can't see clearly yet."
Wallander turned to Modin. "You said you had thought of something new," he said.
"It's hard to explain," Modin said. "And I'm very hungry."
Wallander felt irritated with him for the first time. Modin might be a computer whizz, but he was far from satisfactory in other respects.