“Sonja Hökberg commits murder. Then she gets murdered in turn? Suicide makes more sense.”
Wallander didn’t answer. There were a number of thoughts in his head, but they weren’t linking up with each other. He went over and over the one and only conversation he had had with Sonja Hökberg.
“You talked to her first,” Wallander said. “What was your impression of her?”
“Same as you. That she felt no remorse, and could just as well have killed an old taxi driver as a bug.”
“That doesn’t suggest suicide to me. Why would she kill herself if she felt no remorse?”
Martinsson turned off the windshield wipers. Through the windshield they could see Olle Andersson waiting in his car, and beyond him Nyberg was helping to move a spotlight. His movements were abrupt. Wallander understood that he was both angry and impatient.
“Well, is there anything that suggests it was murder?”
“No,” Wallander answered. “There’s nothing to suggest either possibility, therefore we have to keep them both open. But I think we can rule out accidental death.”
The conversation died away. After a while, Wallander asked Martinsson to make sure the investigative team was ready to meet at eight o’clock in the morning. Then he got out of the car. The rain had stopped. He felt how tired he was, and how cold. His throat ached. He walked over to Nyberg, who was wrapping up work in the transformer building.
“Have you found anything?”
“No.”
“Does Andersson have anything to say?”
“About what? Forensic investigations?”
Wallander counted silently to ten before continuing. Nyberg was in a very bad mood. Saying the wrong thing would make him impossible to talk to.
“He can’t determine what happened,” Nyberg said after a while. “The body caused the power break, but whether it was a dead body or a living person who was thrown down there only the pathologist can say. And even she may not be able to tell.”
Wallander nodded. He looked down at his watch. It was half past three. There was no point in staying any longer.
“I’m going to take off now. But we have a meeting at eight o’clock.”
Nyberg muttered something unintelligible in reply. Wallander took that to mean he would be there. Then he returned to the car, where Martinsson was making notes.
“We’re going,” he said. “You’ll have to take me home.”
They returned to Ystad in silence. When Wallander got back to his apartment he started a bath. While the bathtub was filling up, he swallowed the last of his painkillers and added “pills” to the list on the kitchen table. He wondered helplessly when he would next be able to go by the drugstore.
His body thawed out in the warm water. He dozed off for a couple of minutes, his mind a blank. But then the images returned. Sonja Hökberg and Eva Persson. In his thoughts, he slowly went through the events. He proceeded cautiously so as not to forget anything. Nothing made any sense. Why had Johan Lundberg been killed? What had motivated Sonja Hökberg and made Eva Persson go along with it? He was sure it wasn’t a random impulse. They needed the money for something very particular, or else it was about something entirely different.
There had only been about thirty kronor in the handbag that they had found at the substation. The money from the robbery had been confiscated by the police.
She was desperate, he thought. Suddenly she sees a chance to get away. It’s ten o’clock in the morning. Nothing could have been planned in advance. She leaves the police station and disappear for thirteen hours. Her body is later found eight kilometers from Ystad.
How did she get there? She could have hitched a ride. But she could also have called someone to come pick her up. And then what? Does she ask to be driven to a spot where she commits suicide? Or is she murdered? And who has access to the keys that open the door, but not the ones for the gates?
Wallander got up out of the bath. There are two central questions, he thought. If she had decided to commit suicide, why pick the substation, and how did she get the keys? And if she was murdered, then why?
Wallander crawled into bed and pulled up the blankets. It was half past four. His head was spinning and he realized he was too tired to think. He had to sleep. Before turning out the light, he set his alarm clock. He then pushed the clock as far away from his bed as possible, so he would be forced to get out of bed to turn it off.
When he woke up he felt as if he had only been sleeping for a couple of minutes. He tried to swallow. His throat was still sore but seemed better than it had the day before. He felt his forehead. The fever was gone, but he was congested. He walked out to the bathroom and blew his nose, avoiding his reflection in the mirror. His whole body ached with fatigue. While he was waiting for the water to boil so he could make coffee, he looked out the window. It was still windy, but the rain clouds were gone. It was five degrees Celsius. He wondered absently when he would have time to do anything about his car.
They met in one of the conference rooms at the police station shortly after eight. Wallander looked at Martinsson’s and Hansson’s tired faces and wondered what his own face must be like. Lisa Holgersson, however, who also could not have slept many hours, seemed undismayed. She called the meeting to order.
“We need to be perfectly clear about the fact that last night’s power outage was one of the most serious ever to have hit Scania. That displays the extent of our vulnerability. What happened should have been impossible, but it happened anyway. Now the authorities, power companies, and law enforcement will have to discuss how security can be stepped up. This is just by way of introduction.”
She nodded to Wallander to continue. He gave a brief summation of the events.
“In other words, we don’t know what happened,” he said finally. “We don’t know for sure if it was an accident, suicide, or murder, even if we can reasonably rule out an accident. She was either alone or had someone with her who had broken in through the outside gates. After that they apparently had access to keys. The whole thing is strange, to say the least.”
He looked around at the others gathered around the table. Martinsson said he had confirmed that several police cars had on several different occasions driven along the road that led out to the power substation while they were looking for Sonja Hokberg.
“Then we know this much,” Wallander said. “Someone drove her out there. Were there any car tracks found?”
He directed that question to Nyberg, who sat at the other end of the table with bloodshot eyes and wild hair. Wallander knew how much he was looking forward to his retirement.
“Apart from our own cars and that of Andersson, we found tracks belonging to two other vehicles. But there was a hell of a rainstorm last night and the impressions weren’t too clear.”
“But two other cars had been there?”
“Andersson seemed to think one of them could have belonged to his colleague, Moberg. We’re still checking on it.”
“That leaves one set of car tracks unaccounted for?”
“Yes.”
Ann-Britt Höglund, who hadn’t said anything up to this point, now raised her hand.
“Could it really be anything other than murder?” she asked. “Like all of you, I have a hard time imagining that Sonja Hökberg would have committed suicide. And even if she had decided to end her life, I can’t imagine she would have chosen to burn herself to death.”
Wallander was reminded of an incident that had occurred a few years earlier. A young woman from a Central American country had burned herself to death by pouring gasoline over herself out in the middle of a linseed field. It was one of his worst memories. He had been present. He had seen the girl set fire to herself. And he had not been able to do anything.