"I wouldn't have bothered you, but this is important," he said.

  "It's OK," she said. "She's a bit feverish, and my neighbour can't take her until later."

  Wallander went in. It had been a while since he was last here. In the living room he saw that the Japanese masks had gone from the walls. She followed his gaze.

  "He took his mementos with him," she said.

  "Does he still live in town?"

  "He moved to Malmö."

  "Are you going to stay here?"

  "I don't know if I can afford it."

  The girl in her arms was almost asleep. Höglund put her gently down on the sofa.

  "In a moment I'm going to show you a drawing," Wallander said. "But first I need to ask you something about Carl-Einar Lundberg. I know you haven't met him, but you've seen pictures of him and read the case files on him. Can you recall if there was any mention of a tattoo?"

  She didn't need time to think. "He had a snake design on his right wrist."

  Wallander smacked his hand down on the coffee table. The child jerked awake and started crying, but soon stopped and went back to sleep. At last they had reached a conclusion that held water. He took the drawing out, unfolded it and passed it to her.

  "That's Carl-Einar, no question. Where did you get hold of it?"

  Wallander told her about his encounter with Emil, and learning of his sister's hidden talent for drawing.

  "I'm not sure if we will ever be able to make a charge stick," Wallander said. "But that's not the most important thing right now. What we've done is to prove your theory. It's no longer only a working hypothesis."

  "All the same, it's difficult to believe that she would kill his father."

  "Keep in mind that there may be other factors we still don't know about. But we can lean on Lundberg and see what we get. We're going to assume she killed his father out of revenge. And Persson may not be lying when she said that Hökberg was the one who did both the stabbing and the hitting. Persson is a riddle unto herself that we'll have to attend to later."

  They pondered in silence these latest developments. Finally, Wallander said: "Someone became worried that Hökberg was going to tell us something. So we have three questions we need answers to: what was it she knew? What did it have to do with Falk? Who was the person who became worried?"

  The little girl on the sofa began to whimper. Wallander took that as his cue to leave.

  "Have you seen Martinsson since this morning?" Höglund said.

  "No, but I'm going there now. Don't worry, I'm planning to take your advice. I won't say a word."

  Wallander hurried to his car. He drove to Runnerströms Torg in the pouring rain.

  He sat in his car for a long time, summoning his energy. Then he walked into the building to face Martinsson.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Martinsson greeted Wallander at the door with his widest smile.

  "I've been trying to call you," he said. "Things are happening."

  Wallander had gone into Falk's office with a great deal of pent-up aggression in his body. He was itching to punch Martinsson in the face. But Martinsson smiled and immediately led the conversation to the news of their morning's work. Wallander was somewhat relieved. It gave him breathing space. Time enough for him to have it out with Martinsson later. Besides, Martinsson's smile gave him pause. What if Höglund had misunderstood Martinsson's intentions? Martinsson may have had other matters to discuss with Holgersson. Höglund may also have taken some of his comments the wrong way. Yet in his heart he knew that she had not exaggerated the situation. She had said what she did because she was also upset by it.

  Wallander walked around the table to say hello to Modin.

  "Tell me what's happened," he said.

  "Robert is breaking through one layer of defence after another," Martinsson said with satisfaction. "We're getting deeper and deeper into the strange and fascinating world inside Falk's computer."

  Martinsson offered Wallander the folding chair, but he declined it. Martinsson checked his notes while Modin took a sip of what looked like carrot juice.

  "We've identified four more institutions in Falk's network. The first is the National Bank of Indonesia. Don't ask me how Robert managed to confirm that. He's a wizard when it comes to getting around security."

  Martinsson kept flipping the pages.

  "Then there's a bank in Liechtenstein called Lyder Bank. It gets somewhat harder after this. If we're right, then the next two companies are a French telecommunications firm and a commercial satellite company in Atlanta."

  Wallander furrowed his brow. "What do you make of it?"

  "Our previous theory, that it's all about money, still stands as far as I'm concerned. But it's not clear yet how the telecom company or the Atlanta satellites are involved."

  "Nothing is here by coincidence," Modin said, curtly.

  Wallander turned towards him. "Try to explain it to me in a way I'll understand."

  "OK. Everyone arranges their bookshelves in their own way. Or their folders, or whatever. After a while you learn to see people's patterns even in their computers. The person who worked on this one was very deliberate. Everything is tidy. There is nothing superfluous. But it also isn't arranged in any obvious fashion, like in alphabetical order, or numerical sequences."

  Wallander interrupted him. "Say that again."

  "Well, usually people arrange things alphabetically or in numerical order. A comes before B comes before C. One comes before two and five before seven. But here, there isn't any of that."

  "What's the pattern, then?"

  "Something else entirely."

  "Do you see another kind of pattern?"

  Modin pointed to the screen. Wallander and Martinsson leaned forward.

  "Two components turn up repeatedly," Modin said. "The first one I discovered was the number 20. I tried to see what would happen if I add a few zeroes or change the order round. If I do that, something interesting happens."

  He pointed to the digits on the screen: a two and a zero.

  "See what happens when I do this." Modin typed something and the numbers were highlighted. Then they disappeared.

  "They're like frightened animals that run and hide," Modin said. "It's as if I were shining a bright light on them. They rush back into the darkness. But after a while they come out again, and always in the same place."

  "So how do you interpret this?"

  "That they're important somehow. There's also another component that behaves in this way."

  Modin pointed to the screen again, this time to the initials "JM". "They do the same thing," he said. "If you try to home in on them, they disappear."

  Wallander nodded.

  "They turn up all the time," Martinsson said. "Every time we identify a new institution on the list, they're there. But Robert has found something else."

  Wallander stopped them so he could polish his glasses.

  "If you leave them alone," Modin said, "you start to see after a while that they move around."

  He pointed to the screen again.

  "The first company we identified was the first on the list," he said. "And here the nocturnals are at the top of the column."

  "Nocturnals?"

  "That's what we are calling them," Martinsson said. "We thought it was fitting."

  "Keep going."

  "The second item we managed to identify a bit further down the list, in the second column. Here the nocturnals have moved to the right and lower. If you continue through the list you'll see that they move according to a strict pattern. They move towards the right-hand bottom corner."

  Wallander stretched his back.

  "This still doesn't tell us what they're doing."

  "We're not quite done," Martinsson said. "This is where it gets really interesting."

  "I've found a time element," Modin said. "The nocturnals change their co-ordinates with time. That means there's an invisible timekeeper in here somewhere. I amused myself by constructing a calculation. If you assume that the upper left corner is zero and there are 74 identities in the network and that the number 20 refers to October 20, then you see the following . . ." Modin typed until a new text emerged on the screen. Wallander read the name of the satellite company in Atlanta. Modin pointed to the last two components.

  "This is number four from the end," he said. "And today is October 17."

  Wallander nodded slowly. "You mean the pattern will reach some sort of high point on Monday? That the 20th represents some kind of end point for these nocturnals?"

  "It seems possible."

  "But what about the other component? This JM? What does it mean if we take the 20 to refer to the date?"

  No-one had an answer to that question.

  "What happens on Monday, October 20?"

  "I don't know. But I can tell you that some kind of countdown is under way."

  "Maybe we should just pull the plug."

  "It wouldn't help. This is just a monitor," Martinsson said. "We can't see the network clearly and we don't know if one or more servers are involved."

  "Let's assume the countdown is for a bomb of some kind," Wallander said. "Where, if not from here, is it being controlled?"

  "We don't know."

  Wallander suddenly had the feeling they were on the wrong track. Was he misguided in his assumption that the answer to the whole case lay in Falk's computer? Wallander hesitated. The doubt that had come over him was very strong.

  "We have to rethink this," he said. "From the beginning."

  Martinsson looked shocked. "Do you want us to stop?"

  "I mean we have to rethink this. There have been some developments you aren't aware of."

  They walked onto the landing. Wallander told him about Carl-Einar Lundberg. He felt uncomfortable in Martinsson's presence now, but did his best to hide his feelings.

  "We should move Hökberg's role out of the centre," he said. "I'm convinced now that she died because someone was afraid of what she could tell us."

  "And how do you explain Landahl's death?"

  "They had been in a relationship. Perhaps she had told him what she knew, and this had something to do with Falk."

  He also told him what had happened in Eriksson's flat.

  "That seems to contradict our ideas," Martinsson said.

  "We don't yet know why the electrical relay turned up in the morgue, or why Falk's body was removed. There's an air of desperation in all of this, combined with an extreme ruthlessness. Why would people behave in this way?"

  "Maybe they're fanatics," Martinsson said. "The only thing that matters to them is what they believe in."

  Wallander gestured towards Falk's office. "Modin has done a great job, but the time has come for us to bring in a specialist from the National Police. We can't take any risks if we are facing a countdown to Monday."

  "So Robert is finished here?"

  "Yes. I want you to contact Stockholm immediately. Try to get someone down here today."

  "But it's Friday."

  "I don't care. Monday is just around the corner."

  They went back in. Wallander congratulated Modin on his excellent work and told him he was no longer needed. Modin was clearly disappointed, but he didn't say anything. He just went back to the computer to finish up.

  Wallander and Martinsson turned their backs to him and started discussing the matter of his payment in low tones. Wallander said he would deal with it. Neither one of them noticed that Modin had copied the remaining material on to his computer. They said goodbye outside in the rain. Martinsson was going to drive Modin home. Wallander shook his hand and thanked him.

  Then he drove to the station. He thought about the fact that Elvira Lindfeldt was coming from Malmö that evening. He was both excited and nervous. But before then he had to sit down with the others to rethink the case. Hökberg's rape had dramatically altered the significance of certain events.

  When Wallander walked in through the front doors he saw that someone was waiting in reception. The man came over and introduced himself as Rolf Stenius. The name was familiar to Wallander, but he couldn't place it until the man explained that he was Falk's accountant.

  "I should have called you before coming down here," Stenius said. "But I happened to be in town for another meeting and thought perhaps I'd drop in."

  "It's not a good time," Wallander said. "But I can spare a couple of minutes."

  They went to his office. Rolf Stenius was a gaunt man, about his own age, with thinning hair. Wallander remembered seeing in a memo that Hansson had been in contact with him. Stenius took a plastic folder from his briefcase.

  "I had already been told the sad news of Falk's death when the police contacted me."

  "Who told you?"

  "Falk's ex-wife."

  Wallander nodded for him to continue.

  "I've made a spreadsheet for you of the past two years, and also included other things that may be of interest to you."

  Wallander accepted the plastic folder without looking at it.

  "Was Falk a rich man?"

  "That depends on what you mean by rich. He had about ten million kronor."

  "Then, in my book, he was rich. Did he have any outstanding debts?"

  "Nothing of any consequence. His operating costs were also quite low," Stenius said.

  "His income came from his various consulting projects. Is that correct?"

  "I've given you all the information in this folder."

  "Was there any one project that was significantly more lucrative than the others?"

  "Some of his projects in the US paid very well, but nothing really out of the ordinary."

  "What kind of projects were those?"

  "Among other things he worked for a national advertising chain. Apparently he helped improve their graphic design program."

  "What else?"

  "He worked for a whisky importer by the name of DuPont. He made some kind of advanced warehouse storage program."

  "Did his revenues grow less rapidly in the past year?"

  "I don't think one could say that. He always made wise investments and never put all his eggs in one basket. He had money in Swedish and other Scandinavian and American funds. He kept a good amount of cash on hand, and he invested in several reputable companies. Ericsson, for example."

  "Who handled his stock market account?"

  "He did that himself, mostly."

  "Did he have any interests in Angola?"

  "Where did you say?"

  "Angola."

  "Not that I know of."

  "Could he have had such interests without your knowing about it?"

  "Of course. But I don't think so. Falk was a very honest man. He felt strongly about paying his taxes. When I suggested he think about moving his assets abroad so as to achieve a more favourable tax rate he was very upset."

  "In what way?"

  "He threatened to get a new accountant."

  Wallander felt tired.

  "Thank you," he said. "I'll look through these papers as soon as I have a chance."

  "It's a sad affair," Stenius said, and closed his briefcase. "Falk was a good man. Overly reserved, perhaps, but amiable."

  Wallander escorted him back to reception.

  "Did you have regular meetings with Falk?"

  "I took care of most of the business over the phone."

  "So you didn't have to meet in person?"

  "It's often sufficient to circulate documents and have people sign them in their own time."

  Stenius left the station, unfurling his umbrella as he went. Wallander returned to his office and wondered if anyone had had a chance to speak to Falk's children. We don't even have time for the most important tasks, he thought. We're working our fingers to the bone, but the justice system is degenerating into a crumbling warehouse of unsolved cases.

  At 3.30 p.m., the investigative team gathered for a meeting. Nyberg sent his apologies. Höglund reported that he was suffering from vertigo. They speculated gloomily who among them would be the first to suffer a heart attack. Then they launched into the discussion about Hökberg's rape and its possible consequences for the case. Wallander insisted that Carl-Einar Lundberg be brought in for questioning as soon as possible and looked over to Viktorsson, who nodded his assent. Wallander also asked Höglund to find out if Lundberg senior had been involved in any way.

  "You think he had been after her too?" Hansson said. "What kind of a family is that?"

  "We have to know all the facts," Wallander said.

  "I can't swallow the theory of a revenge by proxy," Martinsson said. "I'm sorry, but that just seems too farfetched to me."

  "We're not discussing how we feel about these things," Wallander said. "We're talking about facts."

  His voice was sharper than he intended. He saw that the others round the table had noticed it. He hurried on in a more friendly tone.

  "What about the National Police and their computer specialists? What did they say?"

  "Well, they whined when I insisted that someone come down right away, but someone will be here by 9 a.m. tomorrow."

  "Does this someone have a name?"

  "His name is actually Hans Alfredsson."

  Everyone burst out laughing. Hans, or rather Hasse, Alfredsson was a legendary Swedish comedian. Martinsson volunteered to meet his plane at Sturup.

  "Do you think you'll be able to show him what's been done so far?" Wallander said.

  "Yes. I made plenty of notes while Modin was working."

  They finished the meeting by talking about Jonas Landahl. Hansson had already contacted his parents and received information over the phone that enabled them to identify the body. The couple had been in Corsica and were now on their way home. Nyberg had sent Höglund a memo in which he stated that Sonja Hökberg had indeed been in Landahl's car, and that the car had been at the substation that night. They now knew that Landahl had no previous record, but that did not mean that he had not been involved in the releasing of the minks at the farm in Sölvesborg, when Falk had been apprehended.

  It was almost 6 p.m. Wallander felt they were not going to get any further and ended the meeting. They would meet again on Saturday. Wallander was now in a hurry. He needed to clean the flat and get himself ready before Elvira arrived. But he went to his office and called Nyberg. It took so long for him to answer that Wallander was getting worried. Finally he answered, furious as usual, and Wallander was able to relax. Nyberg said he was feeling better and would be at work the following day.

 

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