Firewall - By Henning Mankell & Ebba Segerberg Page 0,34

expected us not to find it."

Nyberg was right. This was important.

"You mean: why didn't he just take it with him? Especially if he was hoping the body wouldn't be identified."

"Something like that."

"What would the answer be?"

"That's your job. I'm just giving you the facts. The handbag was lying 15 metres from the transformer building."

"Anything else?"

"No."

The conversation was over. Wallander lifted up the bottle of whisky but then quickly put it down. He had had enough. If he kept on drinking he would cross a threshold he didn't even want to think about. He walked into the living room. It felt strange to be home in the middle of the day. Was this what retirement would be like? The thought made him shiver. He walked to the window and looked into the street. It was already getting dark. He thought about the doctor who had paid him a visit and about the man who had been found dead next to the cash machine. Wallander decided to call the pathologist the next day and tell him what Enander had said. It wouldn't change anything, but at least he would have passed on the information.

He switched to thinking about what Nyberg had said about Hökberg's handbag. There was really only one conclusion, and it was one that brought out his keenest investigative instincts. The bag was where it was because someone wanted it to be found.

Wallander sat on his sofa and thought it through. A body can be burned beyond recognition, he thought. Especially if it is burned with a high-voltage charge that can't be controlled. A person who is executed in the electric chair is boiled from the inside out. Hökberg's murderer knew it would be hard to identify her body. That's why the handbag was left behind.

That still didn't explain what it was doing by the fence, however. Wallander thought it through again, but still could not come up with a sensible explanation. He abandoned the question of the bag. In any case, he was proceeding too quickly. First they had to confirm that Hökberg had in fact been murdered.

He returned to the kitchen and made some coffee. Still no telephone call and it was 4 p.m. He sat at the kitchen table with his coffee and called in again. Irene told him that the papers and television had been on the line all afternoon. She had not given out his number: it had been unlisted for a couple of years now. Wallander thought again that his absence was going to be interpreted as an admission of guilt, or at least as a sign of deep embarrassment about the matter. I should have stood my ground and stayed put, he thought. I should have talked to every damned reporter who called and told them the truth: that both Persson and her mother were lying.

The moment of weakness was over. He was starting to get angry. He asked Irene to put him through to Höglund. He should have started with Holgersson and told her once and for all that her attitude was unacceptable. But he put the phone down before there was an answer. He didn't want to talk to either one of them. Instead he dialled Sten Widén's number. By the time he picked up, Wallander had almost had time to regret it. But he was fairly sure Widén would not yet have seen the picture in the papers.

"I was thinking of coming over," Wallander said. "The only problem is that my car is in the garage."

"I'll pick you up if you like."

They decided on 7 p.m. Wallander glanced in the direction of the whisky bottle, but didn't touch it.

The doorbell rang. Wallander jumped. No-one ever came to his flat unannounced. It was probably a reporter who had somehow got hold of his address. He put the whisky in a cabinet and opened the front door. But it wasn't a reporter, it was Höglund.

"Is this a bad time?"

He stood aside to let her in and turned his face away so she wouldn't smell the alcohol on his breath. They sat down in the living room.

"I have a cold," Wallander said. "I didn't have the energy to keep working."

She nodded, but he didn't for a second suppose that she believed him. She had no reason to. Everyone knew Wallander always kept working through whatever fevers or ailments he was suffering from.

"How are you holding up?" she said.

The moment of weakness is over, Wallander thought. Even if it has just retreated for now