“That’s what’s going to happen,” Modin said.
Everyone stared at him. He was sitting on the floor next to Wallander with his legs crossed.
“Why do you say that? Do you know it for a fact?”
“No, not for a fact. But I think this is going to be so big we can’t even imagine it. We’re not going to be able to deduce what’s going to happen before it’s too late.”
“How does the whole thing start? Isn’t there a starting point, some kind of button that needs to be pressed?”
“I imagine it will be started by some action that’s so ordinary we would have trouble accepting it.”
“The hypothetical coffee machine,” Martinsson said.
Wallander was quiet. He looked around.
“The only thing we can do right now is keep going,” he said. “We don’t have a choice.”
“I left some diskettes in Malmö,” Modin said. “I need them in order to keep working.”
“I’ll send out a car to get them for you.”
“I’ll go too,” Modin said. “I need to get out. And I know of a store in Malmö that stays open late and has the kind of food I like.”
Wallander nodded and got up. Hansson called for a patrol car that would take Modin to Malmö. Wallander called Elvira. The line was busy. He tried again. Now she answered. He told her what had happened, that Modin needed to come by and pick up the diskettes he had left behind. She said it was no problem. Her voice sounded normal now.
“Can I expect to see you as well?” she asked.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have the time right now.”
“I won’t ask you why.”
“Thank you. It would take too long to explain.”
Alfredsson and Martinsson were leaning over Falk’s computer again. Wallander, Hansson, and Höglund returned to the station. When Wallander reached his office, the phone rang. It was the reception desk, telling him he had a visitor.
“Who is it and what is it about?” Wallander asked. “I don’t have any time right now.”
“It’s someone who says she’s your neighbor. A Mrs. Hartman.”
Wallander immediately worried that something had happened. A few years ago there had been a bad water leak in his apartment. Mrs. Hartman was a widow who lived in the apartment beneath his. That time she had called him at the station.
“I’ll be right there,” Wallander said and hung up.
When he reached the waiting area, Mrs. Hartman was able to assuage his fears. There was no water leak, just a letter for him that had been delivered to her.
“It must be the mailman,” she complained. “It probably came on Friday, but I’ve been away this whole time and only returned earlier today. I just thought it might be important, that’s all.”
“You shouldn’t have taken the trouble of coming down here,” Wallander said. “I rarely get mail that is so important it can’t wait.”
She handed him the letter. There was no return address on the envelope. After Mrs. Hartman had left, Wallander went back to his room and opened the letter. To his surprise he saw it was a notice from the dating service thanking him for his subscription and assuring him that they would forward any replies as they arrived.
Wallander crumpled the piece of paper and threw it in the trash. For the next couple of seconds his mind was a total blank. Then he frowned, took out the letter from the trash, smoothed it, and read it again. Then he looked for the envelope, still without knowing exactly why. He stared at the postmark for a long time. The letter had been posted on Thursday.
His mind was still empty.
Thursday. But at that point he had already received a reply from Elvira Lindfeldt. Her letter had arrived in an envelope that had been brought directly to his door. A letter without a postmark of any kind.
His thoughts were swirling around in his head.
Then he turned and looked at his computer. He wondered if he was going crazy. Then he forced himself to think logically and clearly. As he kept staring at his computer, a picture started to emerge. A plausible sequence of events. It was horrifying.
He ran out into the corridor and into Hansson’s office.
“Call the patrol car!” he shouted as soon as he came in. Hansson jerked back and stared at him.
“Which patrol car?”
“The one that took Modin to Malmö.”
“Why?”
“Just do it. Quickly!”
Hansson grabbed the phone. He got through to them in less than two minutes.
“They’re on their way back,” he said putting the phone down. Wallander breathed a sigh of relief.
“But they left Modin at the house.”
Wallander felt as if he had been punched in the stomach.
“Why did they do that?”
“Apparently he came out and told them that he was going to keep working from the house.”
Wallander didn’t move. His heart was beating very hard. He still had trouble believing that it was true. But he himself had suggested the risk of someone breaking into their computers on an earlier occasion. These break-ins weren’t necessarily limited to material surrounding the investigation. Someone could just as easily access more personal information — such as a letter that someone sent to a dating service.
“Take your gun with you,” he said. “We’re leaving.”
“Where to?”
“Malmö.”
Wallander tried to explain the situation along the way, but Hansson seemed to have trouble understanding the full story. Wallander kept asking him to try Elvira’s number, but there was no answer. Wallander put the police siren on the roof and increased his speed. He prayed silently to all the gods he could think of to spare Modin’s life. But he already feared the worst.
They stopped in front of the house shortly after ten o’clock. The house was dark. They stepped out of the car. Wallander asked Hansson to wait in the shadows down by the gate. Then he cocked his gun and walked up the path. When he reached the front door, he stopped and listened. Then he rang the bell. There was no answer. He rang again. Then he felt the doorknob. It was unlocked. He gestured for Hansson to come up.
“We should send for reinforcements,” Hansson hissed.
“There’s no time.”
Wallander slowly opened the door. He listened. He didn’t know what was waiting for them in the dark. He remembered that the light switch was on the wall to the left of the door, and after fumbling around for a while he found it. As soon as the light came on he took a step to the side and crouched down.
The hall was empty.
Some light fell into the living room. He could see that Elvira was sitting on the sofa. She was looking at him. Wallander took a deep breath. She didn’t move. Wallander knew that she was dead. He called out to Hansson. They carefully went into the living room.
She had been shot in the neck. The pale yellow sofa was drenched in blood.
Then they searched the house, but they didn’t find anything.
Robert Modin was gone. Wallander knew that could only mean one thing.
Someone had been waiting for him in the house.
The man in the field had not been working alone.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
He didn’t know what it was that kept him going that night. He imagined it was equal parts self-reproach and rage. But the overriding emotion was his fear for what might have happened to Modin. His first terrified thought when he realized that Elvira was dead was that Modin had also been killed. But once they had searched the house and established that it was empty, Wallander realized that Modin might still be alive. Everything up to this point in the case seemed to have been about concealment and secrets, and that must be the reason for Modin’s abduction as well. Wallander didn’t have to remind himself of Sonja Hökberg’s and Jonas Landahl’s fates. But this was not precisely the same situation. That time the police had not known what was going to happen. Now that they knew more, they had a better starting point, even though they didn’t yet know what had happened to Modin.