“Did he see anything else?”
“There was no one here when he arrived and he didn’t meet anyone walking around.”
Wallander thought for a moment.
“We have to get to the bottom of this question of the keys,” he said. Andersson was talking with Ågren on the radio when Wallander got into his car. He immediately finished the conversation.
“I know that you’re shaken by this,” Wallander said.
“I’ve never seen anything so terrible. What happened, exactly?”
“We don’t know that yet. Now, when you arrived on the scene, the gates had been forced open but the steel door had been opened without any visible use of force. How do you explain that?”
“I can’t.”
“Who else has copies of these keys?”
“Only another repairman called Moberg. He lives in Ystad. And the main office, of course. But the security is always very tight.”
“But someone did unlock the steel door?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“I take it these keys can’t be copied.”
“The locks are made in the United States. They’re supposed to be impossible to jimmy.”
“What’s Moberg’s first name?”
“Lars.”
“Is it possible someone forgot to lock the door?”
Andersson shook his head.
“That would be grounds for instant dismissal. The security checks are very thorough. If anything, security has increased in the past few years.”
Wallander had nothing else to ask for the moment.
“I’d like you to remain here for now,” he said. “In case any other questions come up. I’d also like you to call Lars Moberg and ask him if he still has the keys for this place. The ones that open the steel door.”
Wallander left the car. It was no longer raining as hard. The conversation with Andersson had increased his sense of anxiety. It was still possible that someone wanting to commit suicide had decided to come out here to this substation, but the facts were starting to speak against this hypothesis; among other things, the fact that the steel door had been opened with keys. Wallander realized where this thought was leading: murder. The victim had then been disposed of in the power lines to cover up the crime.
Wallander walked into the strong spotlights. The photographer had just finished taking his pictures and video clips. Nyberg was kneeling by the body. He started muttering irritably when Wallander happened to block his light.
“What’s your take on this?”
“That it’s taking the pathologist an awfully long time to get out here. I want to move the body to see if there’s anything behind it.”
“I mean your take on what could have happened.”
Nyberg thought for a while before answering.
“It’s a macabre way for someone to choose to commit suicide. If it’s murder, it’s unusually brutal. It would be the equivalent of executing someone in the electric chair.”
That’s right, Wallander thought. That leads us to the possibility that it’s an act of revenge. Taking revenge through executing someone in a very special kind of electric chair.
Nyberg continued to work. One of his technicians had started to search the area between the building and the gates. The pathologist arrived, a woman Wallander had met several times before. Her name was Susann Bexell and she was a woman of few words. She immediately got down to business. Nyberg got his thermos from his bag and had a cup of coffee. He offered Wallander some. Wallander decided to accept. They would get no more sleep that night anyway. Martinsson turned up at their side, wet and frozen. Wallander passed him his cup of coffee.
“They’re starting to restore power,” Martinsson said. “Parts of Ystad already have some light. I have no idea how they managed to do that.”
“Has Andersson spoken to his colleague Moberg about the keys?”
Martinsson walked off to find out. Wallander saw that Hansson was sitting frozen behind his steering wheel. He walked over and told Hansson to return to the station. Most of Ystad was still dark, after all, and he would be able to do more good there than here. Hansson nodded gratefully and drove off. Wallander walked over to the pathologist.
“Have you learnt anything about him?”
Susann Bexell looked over at him.
“Just enough to tell you you’re wrong. This isn’t a man, it’s a woman.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, but I’m not going to answer any other questions for now.”
“I just have one more question. Was she dead when she wound up here, or was it the power that killed her?”
“I don’t know that yet.”
Wallander turned around thoughtfully. He had been assuming the victim was a man.
At that moment the crime technician who had been searching the area came over to Nyberg with something in his hand. Wallander joined them.
The object was a woman’s handbag.
Wallander stared at it.
At first he thought he was making a mistake.
Then he knew he had seen it on a previous occasion. More specifically, yesterday.
“I found it to the north by the fence,” said the technician, whose name was Ek.
“Is the body in there a woman?” Nyberg asked with surprise.
“Not only that,” Wallander said. “Now we know who she is.”
The handbag had recently rested on a desk inside the interrogation room. It had a clasp that looked like an oak leaf.
He wasn’t making a mistake.
“This purse belongs to Sonja Hökberg,” he said. “She’s the one who’s lying in there.”
It was ten minutes past two. The rain had picked up again.
Chapter Eight
The power in Ystad was restored shortly after three o’clock. At that time Wallander was still working with the crime technicians at the substation. Hansson called from the police station and told him the news. In the distance, Wallander could see lights come on on the outside of a barn.
The pathologist had finished her work, the body had been removed, and Nyberg had been able to continue his forensic investigation. He had asked Olle Andersson to explain the complicated network of lines and switches inside the transformer building. Outside, his technicians worked to find any traces that might have been left behind. It was still raining, which made for difficult working conditions. Martinsson slipped in the mud and cut his elbow. Wallander was shaking with cold and longed for his rubber boots.
Soon after the power in Ystad was restored, Wallander took Martinsson with him to one of the police cars. There they mapped out the information they had gathered so far. Sonja Hökberg had escaped from the police station about thirteen hours earlier. She could have made it to the substation on foot, but neither Wallander nor Martinsson thought it plausible. After all, it was eight kilometers to Ystad.
“Someone should have seen her,” Martinsson said. “Our cars were out looking for her.”
“Double-check to see if a squad car came down this way and saw someone.”
“What’s te alternative?”
“That someone gave her a ride. Someone who left her and drove off.”
They both knew what that implied. The question of how Sonja Hökberg had died was still the most pressing. Did she commit suicide or was she murdered?
“The keys,” Wallander said. “The gates were forced, but not the door. Why?”
They both searched in their thoughts for a rational explanation.
“We need a list of anyone who could possibly have had access to the keys,” Wallander continued. “I want every key accounted for. Who had them, and what they were doing last night.”
“I have trouble getting all this to hang together,” Martinsson said.