Wallander decided to accept. They would get no more sleep that night anyway. Martinsson turned up at their side, wet and stiff. Wallander passed him his cup of coffee.
"They're beginning to restore power," Martinsson said. "Parts of Ystad already have some light. I have no idea how they managed to do that."
"Has Andersson spoken to his colleague Moberg about the keys?"
Martinsson walked off to find out. Wallander saw that Hansson was sitting rigidly behind his steering wheel. He walked over and told Hansson to return to the station. Most of Ystad was still dark, after all, and he would be of more use there than here. Hansson nodded gratefully and drove away. Wallander walked over to the pathologist.
"Have you learned anything about him?"
Susann Bexell looked up.
"Just enough to tell you that this is a woman."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, but I'm not going to answer any other questions for now."
"Just one more. Was she dead when she got here, or was it the power that killed her?"
"I don't know that yet."
Wallander turned round, lost in thought. He had been assuming the victim was a man.
At that moment the technician, searching between the gates, came to Nyberg with something in his hand. Wallander joined them. It was a woman's handbag. Wallander stared at it. At first he thought he was making a mistake. Then he knew he had seen it before. More specifically, yesterday.
"I found it to the north by the fence," said the technician, whose name was Ek.
"Is the body in there a woman?" Nyberg asked, in surprise.
"Not only that," Wallander said. "Now we know who she is."
The handbag had been on a desk inside the interrogation room. It had a clasp that looked like an oak leaf. There was no mistaking it.
"This bag belongs to Sonja Hökberg," he said. "She's the one in there."
It was 2.10 a.m. The rain came on more heavily.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The power in Ystad was restored shortly after 3 a.m. At that time Wallander was still working with the technicians at the substation. Hansson called from the police station and told him the news. Wallander could see lights come on in the distance on the outside of a barn.
The pathologist had finished her work, the body had been removed and Nyberg had been able to continue his forensic investigation. He had asked Andersson to explain the complicated network of lines and switches inside the transformer building. Outside, his technicians worked to find any traces that might have been left behind. The rain was making for difficult working conditions. Martinsson slipped in the mud and bruised his elbow. Wallander was shivering with cold and longed for his Wellingtons.
Soon after the power was restored in Ystad, Wallander took Martinsson with him to one of the police cars. There they mapped out the information they had gathered so far. Hökberg had escaped from the police station about 13 hours earlier. She could have made it to the substation on foot, but neither Wallander nor Martinsson thought it plausible. It was, after all, 3 kilometres to Ystad.
"Someone would have seen her," Martinsson said. "Our cars were out looking for her."
"Double-check to see if a patrol car came this way."
"What's the alternative?"
"That someone gave her a lift. Someone who left her and drove off."
They both knew what that implied. The question of how Hökberg had died was still the most pressing. Did she commit suicide or was she murdered?
"The keys," Wallander said. "The gates were forced, but not the door. Why?"
They searched for a rational explanation.
"We need a list of anyone who could possibly have had access to the keys," Wallander said. "I want every key holder accounted for, and what they were doing last night."
"I have trouble getting this to hang together," Martinsson said. "Hökberg commits murder. Then she gets murdered herself? Suicide makes more sense."
Wallander didn't answer. There were a number of thoughts in his head, but they weren't connecting with each other. He went over and over the one and only conversation he had had with Hökberg.
"You talked to her first," Wallander said. "What was your impression of her?"
"Same as yours. That she felt no remorse, and might just as well have killed an insect as an old taxi driver."
"That doesn't suggest suicide to me. Why would she kill herself if she felt no remorse?"
Martinsson turned off the windscreen wipers. They could see Andersson waiting in his car and beyond him Nyberg was helping to move a spotlight. His movements were brusque. Wallander could tell that he was both angry