Wallander stared at him in disbelief.
“Escaped?”
“It happened about an hour ago. We’ve put all available personnel on the search, but she’s gone.”
Wallander looked at his colleagues.
Then he took off his coat and sat down.
Chapter Six
It didn’t take Wallander long to understand what must have happened.
It Someone had been sloppy, someone had disregarded the most basic security measures. But above all, someone had forgotten the fact that Sonja Hökberg was not the innocent young girl she appeared to be; that she had committed a brutal murder only a couple of days before.
It was easy to recontstruct the chain of events. Sonja Hökberg was supposed to be moved from one room to another. She had met with her lawyer and was to be brought back to the holding cell. While she was waiting to be moved, she had asked to go to the bathroom. When she came back out she saw that the officer on guard had turned his back to her and was engaged in conversation with someone in one of the neighboring offices. She had then simply walked the other way. No one had tried to stop her. She had walked straight out through the front hall. No one had seen her. Not Irene, not anyone else. After about five minutes, the officer in charge of her had gone into the bathroom and discovered that she was gone. He had then looked into the room where she had talked to her lawyer, and then he’d alerted security. At that point Sonja Hökberg had had ten minutes to do her disappearing act, and that had been more than enough time.
Wallander groaned and felt his headache worsen.
“I’ve alerted all available personnel,” Martinsson said. “And I called her father. You had just left the house. Did you discover anything that might tell us where she’s headed?”
“Her mother is staying with her sister in Höör.”
He gave Martinsson the number.
“She can hardly be planning to go there on foot,” Hansson said.
“She has a driver’s licence,” Martinsson said, with the telephone receiver pressed against his ear. “She could hitch a ride, steal a car.”
“The first person we have to talk to is Eva Persson,” Wallander said. “And that’s going to happen pronto. Juvenile or not, she’s going to tell us everything she knows.”
Hansson got up to leave and almost collided with Lisa Holgersson, who had only just heard of the disappearance. While Martinsson was talking on the phone with Sonja Hökberg’s mother, Wallander told Holgersson how the escape had taken place.
“This is simply unacceptable,” she said when Wallander had finished.
Holgersson was furious. Wallander liked that about her. He thought about how their previous chief, Björk, would always start worrying about his own reputation at times like these.
“These things are not supposed to happen,” Wallander said. “But they do. The most important thing right now is to track her down. Then we’ll have to scrutinize our security practices and figure out who’s responsible for the mistakes in this case.”
“Do you think there’s a danger of more violence?”
Wallander thought for a moment. He saw an image of her room and all the stuffed animals sitting in a row.
“We don’t know enough about her at this point,” he said. “But additional violence cannot be ruled out.”
Martinsson put the phone down.
“I’ve just talked to her mother,” he said. “And our colleagues in Höör. They know what to do.”
“I’m not sure any of us knows that,” Wallander objected. “But I want that girl picked up as soon as possible.”
“Was the escape planned?” Holgersson asked.
“Not according to the officer in charge,” Martinsson answered. “I think she took advantage of the situation.”
“Oh, it was planned,” Wallander said. “She was waiting for the right moment, that’s all. Has anyone spoken to her attorney? Could he be of any help?”
“I don’t think anyone’s thought of that yet,” Martinsson said. “He left the station when he was done talking to her.”
Wallander got up.
“I’ll talk to him.”
“What about the press conference?” Holgersson asked. “What should we do about that?”
Wallander looked down at his watch. It was twenty minutes past eleven.
“We’ll do it as planned, but I’m afraid we’ll have to give them the latest developments.”
“I guess I should be there,” Holgersson said.
Wallander didn’t answer. He returned to his office, his head throbbing. Every time he had to swallow it hurt.
I should be lying in bed, he thought. Not out running around after teenage girls who murder taxi drivers.
He found some tissues in a desk drawer and wiped himself down as well as he could. He was running a temperature and sweating profusely. Then he called Sonja Hökberg’s lawyer, Lötberg, and told him what had happened.
“This is unexpected,” Lötberg said when Wallander had finished.
“What this is is a problem,” Wallander said. “Do you have any information that might help us?”
“I don’t think so. It was hard to connect with her. She seemed very calm on the surface but as to what was going on underneath I have no idea.”
“Did she mention a boyfriend? Anyone she wanted to see?”
“No.”
“No one?”
“She asked about Eva Persson.”
Wallander paused.
“She didn’t ask about her parents?”
“Actually, no.”
This fact struck Wallander as strange, and reminded him of the feeling her room had given him. His sense that something didn’t quite add up about Sonja Hökberg was growing stronger.
“Of course I’ll be in touch if she contacts me,” Lötberg said.
They finished the conversation and Wallander was left with the image of her room in his head. It was a child’s room, he thought. Not the room of a nineteen-year-old. It was still the room of a ten-year-old, as if the room had suddenly stopped aging even though Sonja was still growing.
He couldn’t develop this insight any further, but he knew it was important.
It took Martinsson less than half an hour to arrange Wallander’s meeting with Eva Persson and her mother. Wallander was shocked when he saw the girl. She was short and hardly looked older than twelve. He looked at her hands and tried unsuccessfully to imagine her holding a knife and forcefully plunging it into the chest of her victim. But he soon discovered that there was something about her that reminded him of Sonja Hökberg. At first he couldn’t put his finger on it, but then he realized what it was.
The look in her eyes, the same indifference.
Martinsson left them alone. Wallander would have liked Höglund to be present, but she was out in the field somewhere, trying to organize the search for Sonja Hökberg as efficiently as possible.
Eva Persson’s mother looked like she had been crying. Wallander felt sorry for her. He shuddered to think what she was going through.
He got right to the point.
“Sonja has escaped. I want you to tell me where you think she’s gone. Think carefully before you say anything, and make sure you tell the whole truth. Understand?”
Eva Persson nodded.
“Where do you think she’s gone?”
“Home, probably. Where else would she have gone?”
Wallander couldn’t tell if she was telling the truth or being arrogant. He realized his headache was making him impatient.
“If she had gone home, we would already have found her,” he said and raised his voice a little. Eva Persson’s mother seemed to retreat into herself.
“I don’t know where she is.”