It took him nineteen minutes to reach the substation. The area was completely dark. Every time the power went out and he was out looking for the problem he was struck by the same thought: that as little as a hundred years ago this impenetrable darkness had been the norm. The advent of electricity had changed everything. No person still living could remember what life had been like before. But Andersson would also think about how vulnerable society had become. In the worst-case scenario, one single snag in the power grid could plunge a third of the country into darkness.
“I’m here,” he told Ågren on his radio transmitter.
“Hurry up, then.”
The power substation stood in the middle of a field. It was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. At regular intervals there were No TRESPASSING and DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE signs. He hunched over against the wind, carrying a set of keys in his hand and wearing some glasses he had constructed himself. He had attached two small and powerful flashlights to the frames. He found the right keys and stopped in front of the gates. They were open. He looked around. There was no other car, no sign of a person. He took up his radio again and called Ågren.
“The gates have been busted open,” he said.
Ågren had trouble hearing him because of the wind. Andersson had to repeat himself.
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s here. I’m going in.”
It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. The gates had been broken open before, and it was always reported to the police. Sometimes the police managed to apprehend the guilty party, usually drunk teenagers on a vandalism kick. But they had also discussed the possibility of someone bent on sabotaging the power-distribution grid. In fact, Andersson had been in a meeting only this last September in which one of the Sydkraft safety engineers had talked about instituting a whole new set of security measures.
He turned his head. Since he had his handheld flashlight as well, three spots of light traveled across the metal frame of the substation. A little gray building set deep among the steel towers was the heart of the structure. It housed the transformers. It had a thick steel door that could only be opened with two different keys, or by the use of powerful explosives. Andersson had marked the various keys on his keychain with colored bits of tape. The red key went to the gates, the yellow and blue were for the steel door of the transformer building. He looked around. The place was deserted. The only thing he heard was the wind. He started walking but stopped after only a few steps. Something had caught his attention. He looked around. Was there anyone behind him? He could hear Ågren’s raspy voice coming from the radio that dangled from his jacket. He didn’t bother to answer. What was it that had made him stop? There was nothing out there in the darkness, at least nothing he could see. There was, however, a bad smell, but that probably came from the fields, he thought. The farmer must have fertilized them recently He continued toward the transformer building. The bad smell still lingered. Suddenly he stopped short. The steel door was ajar. He took a few steps back and clutched the radio.
“The door’s open,” he said. “Can you hear me?”
“I hear you. What do you mean the door is open?”
“Just what I said.”
“Is anyone there?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t look like it’s been forced.”
“Then how could it be open?”
“I don’t know.”
The radio was quiet. Andersson felt very alone. Ågren spoke up.
“Do you mean the door is unlocked?”
“That’s what it looks like to me. And there’s a strange smell.”
“You’ll have to go see what it is. There’s a lot of pressure right now from above to get this thing cleared up. The bosses keep calling and asking what the hell happened.”
Andersson took a deep breath and walked all the way up to the door, opened it further and directed his flashlight inside. At first he didn’t know what he was looking at. The stench was overwhelming. Slowly it dawned on him what had happened. The power had gone out in Scania this October evening because a burned corpse lay among the power lines.
He stumbled backward out of the building and called for Ågren to come in.
“There’s a corpse in the transformer building.”
A few seconds went by before Ågren replied.
“Can you repeat that?”
“There’s a burned body in there. A person has short-circuited the entire region.”
“Are you serious?”
“You heard me. Something must have gone wrong with the relay safety.”
“We’ll call the police. You stay where you are. We’ll try to reconnect the power grid to bypass you.”
The radio went dead. Andersson realized he was shaking. He couldn’t believe what had happened. What could drive a person to go down to a power substation and commit suicide with high voltage electrical current? It was like choosing execution by the electric chair.
He felt sick to his stomach and tried to keep himself from throwing up by walking back to the car.
The wind was still gusty, and now it had started to rain.
The police in Ystad were alerted shortly after midnight. The officer who took the call from Sydkraft wrote down the information and made a quick decision. Since a death was involved, he called Hansson, who was the senior officer on duty. He promised to drive out right away. He had a candle by the phone. He knew Martinsson’s phone number by heart. It took Martinsson a while to pick up since he was sleeping and had no idea the power was off. He listened to what Hansson had to say and knew it was a serious matter. When the conversation was over, he called Wallander.
Wallander had fallen asleep on the sofa while he had been waiting for the power to come back on. When the phone rang and woke him up it was still dark. He inadvertently knocked the phone down onto the floor as he was reaching for the receiver.
“It’s Martinsson. Hansson just called me.”
Wallander sensed that something serious had happened. He held his breath.
“A body has been found on one of Sydkraft’s stations outside Ystad.”
“Is that why there’s no power?”
“I don’t know. But I thought you should be notified, even if you are sick.”
Wallander swallowed. His throat was still sore but he felt no fever.
“My car has broken down,” he said. “You’ll have to pick me up.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Make that five,” said Wallander. “If it’s true the whole region is without power.”
He got dressed in the dark and went down to wait on the street. It was raining. Martinsson arrived in seven minutes. They drove through the dark city. Hansson was waiting by one of the roundabouts at the outskirts of town.
“It’s one of the substations just north of the waste management plant,” Martinsson said.
Wallander knew where it was. He had been on a walk in a forest close by a few years ago, when Baiba had been visiting.
“What exactly happened?”
“I don’t know any details. Sydkraft made an emergency call claiming to have found a dead body out there when they were investigating the power outage.”
“Is it affecting a large area?”
“According to Hansson, one quarter of Scania is without power.”
Wallander looked at him in disbelief. Blackouts were rarely so large. It happened occasionally after a big winter storm. It had happened after the hurricane in the fall of 1996. But not when the weather was like this.