Firewall - By Henning Mankell & Ebba Segerberg Page 0,29

and impatient.

"Well, is there anything that suggests it was murder?"

"No," Wallander said. "There's nothing to indicate either possibility, therefore we have to keep them both open. But I think we can rule out accidental death."

After a while Wallander asked Martinsson to make sure the investigative team was ready to meet at 8 a.m. Then he got out of the car. The rain had stopped. He felt how tired he was, and how cold. His throat ached. He walked over to Nyberg, who was wrapping up work in the transformer building.

"Have you found anything?"

"No."

"Does Andersson have anything to say?"

"About what? Forensic investigations?"

Wallander silently counted to ten before going on. Nyberg was in a very bad mood. Saying the wrong thing would make him impossible to talk to.

"He can't determine what happened," Nyberg said after a while. "The body caused the power break, but whether it was a dead body or a living person who was thrown down there only the pathologist can say. And she may not be able to tell either."

Wallander nodded. He looked down at his watch. It was 3.30 a.m. There was no point in staying any longer.

"I'm going to take off now. But we have a meeting at 8 a.m."

Nyberg muttered something unintelligible. Wallander took that to mean he would be there. Then he returned to the car where Martinsson was making notes.

"We're going," he said. "You'll have to take me home."

They returned to Ystad in silence. When Wallander got back to his flat he ran a bath. While the bath was filling up he swallowed the last of his painkillers and added them to the list on the kitchen table. He wondered, helplessly, when he would next be able to stop at the chemist's.

His body thawed out in the warm water. He dozed off for a while, his mind a blank, but then the images returned. Sonja Hökberg and Eva Persson. Slowly he rehearsed the events. He proceeded steadily so as not to forget anything. Nothing made any sense. Why had Lundberg been killed? What had motivated Hökberg and made Persson go along with it? He was sure it wasn't a random impulse. They needed the money for something very particular, or else it was all about something entirely different.

There had only been about 30 kronor in the handbag that they had found at the substation. The money from the robbery had been confiscated by the police.

She ran away, he thought. Suddenly she sees a chance to get away. It's 10 a.m. Nothing could have been planned in advance. She leaves the police station and disappears for 13 hours until her body is found 8 kilometres from Ystad.

How did she get there? he thought. She could have hitchhiked. But she could also have called someone to come and pick her up. And then what? Does she ask to be driven to a spot where she commits suicide? Or is she murdered? And who has access to the keys that open the door, but not the ones for the gates?

Wallander got out of the bath. There are two central questions, he thought. If she had decided to commit suicide, why pick the substation, and how did she get the keys? And if she was murdered, then why? And by whom?

Wallander crawled into bed and pulled up the sheets. It was 4.30 a.m. His head was spinning and he was too tired to think. He had to sleep. Before turning out the light he set his alarm clock. He then pushed the clock as far away from his bed as possible, so he would be forced to get out of bed to turn it off.

When he woke up he felt as if he had only been sleeping for a couple of minutes. He tried to swallow. His throat was still sore, but it seemed better than the day before. He felt his forehead. The fever was gone, but he was congested. He walked to the bathroom and blew his nose, avoiding his reflection in the mirror. His whole body ached with fatigue. While he was waiting for the water for his coffee, he looked out of the window. It was still windy, but the rain clouds were gone. It was 5°C. He wondered, vaguely, when he would ever have time to do anything about his car.

They met in one of the conference rooms at the station a little after 8 a.m. Wallander looked at Martinsson and Hansson's tired faces and wondered what his own face must be like.