Firewall - By Henning Mankell & Ebba Segerberg Page 0,95

could hear nothing.

He walked back to the desk. Without thinking, he lifted the keyboard. There was a postcard lying underneath it. He directed the lamp at it and put on his glasses. The card was old and the colours had faded. It was a picture of a tropical bay. There were palm trees, a pier, fishing boats in the water. Behind the shoreline a row of tall buildings. He turned the card over and saw that it was addressed to Tynnes Falk at the Apelbergsgatan address. So much for Eriksson receiving all his mail. Had she lied to him, or did she not know about this other mail? There was no message on the card, just the letter "C". Wallander studied the postmark. The stamp was partly torn off, but he could make out the letters "1" and "d". The other letters probably would be vowels, but he couldn't guess what they were, nor could he decipher a date. There was nothing printed on the card to say where the picture had been taken. Wallander was reminded of an unhappy and chaotic trip he had once taken to the West Indies. The palm trees were the same, but the cityscape didn't look familiar.

He studied the "C" again. The same as the C in Falk's diary. Falk had known who it was, or what it was and had saved the postcard. In this bare room that contained nothing beyond the computer and a blueprint of a power substation, there had been this postcard. Wallander tucked it into his jacket pocket. Then he lifted the computer monitor but there was nothing there. He lifted the phone. Nothing. He looked around for another minute before he turned out the light and left.

He was exhausted when he got back to Mariagatan, but before going to bed he couldn't resist getting out his magnifying glass and studying the postcard again. It didn't tell him anything more.

He went to bed shortly before 2 a.m. and fell asleep at once.

Monday morning Wallander made only a brief stop at the station. He handed the flat keys over to Martinsson and asked him about the car that had been seen the night before. Martinsson already had the report on his desk. Wallander didn't say anything about the postcard. It wasn't that he wanted to keep it to himself, but because he was in a hurry. He didn't want to get bogged down in a long discussion.

Before leaving the station he made two calls. One was to Siv Eriksson. He asked her about the number 20 and about the letter C. She couldn't think of anything, but she said she would be in touch if anything came to her. He told her about the postcard he had found in Falk's office. Her exclamation of surprise was so spontaneous that he didn't doubt it was genuine. Wallander told her what the postcard depicted, but she couldn't shed any light on its provenance.

"Maybe he had even more addresses," she said.

Wallander sensed a note of disappointment in her voice, as if she felt betrayed by Falk.

"We'll look into it," he said. "You could be right about his having other houses."

Wallander realised that the very sound of her voice had cheered him up, but he didn't let himself dwell on it. He made the next call, which was to Marianne Falk. He told her that he would be with her in half an hour.

The next few hours he sat in Mrs Falk's living room and listened to her talk about the man she had been married to. Wallander started at the beginning. When had they met? How had he been in those days? Mrs Falk turned out to have an excellent memory. She rarely faltered or had to pause to gather her thoughts. Wallander had brought his notebook, but he didn't take any notes. He wasn't planning to research what she told him, he was simply trying to get some understanding of the man Falk had been.

Falk had grown up on a farm outside Link枚ping, she said. He was an only child. On leaving school he had done his military service and then started his studies in Uppsala. He had not been able to decide on any one subject and had taken courses in everything from law to literature. After a year he had moved to Stockholm, to the business school.

That was when they had met. It was in 1972. She was training to be a nurse and had gone to a big party