Firewall - By Henning Mankell & Ebba Segerberg Page 0,1

not permit himself.

He turned round and started back. As he walked past the Tax Authority he decided to go to the cash machine in the square. He put his hand over the pocket where he kept his wallet. He wasn't going to make a withdrawal, just get an account balance and make sure all was as it should be.

He stopped in the light by the ATM and took out his blue card. The woman with the Alsatian was long gone. A heavily loaded truck went by on the Malmö road, probably on its way to one of the Poland ferries. By the sound of it, the muffler was damaged.

He punched in his code and selected "account balance". The machine returned his card and he put it back in his wallet. He listened to the whirring and clicking and smiled. If they only knew, he thought. If people only knew what lay in store for them.

The paper slip showing his balance emerged from the slot. He felt around for his glasses before he realised he had left them in his other coat. He felt a twinge of irritation at this oversight.

He walked to where the light was brightest, under the street lamp, and studied the slip of paper. There was Friday's withdrawal, as well as the cash he had taken out on Saturday. His balance was 9,765 kronor. Everything was in order.

What happened next came without warning. It was as if he had been kicked in the chest by a horse. The pain was sudden and violent.

He fell forward, the piece of paper clutched in his hand. As his head hit the pavement he experienced an instant of clarity. His final thought was that he couldn't understand what was happening to him. A darkness enveloped him from all sides.

A second truck on its way to the night ferry drove past.

Then calm returned to the streets.

It was just after midnight on Monday, October 6, 1997.

CHAPTER TWO

When Kurt Wallander got into his car on Mariagatan in Ystad, on the morning of October 6, 1997, it was with reluctance. It was just gone 8 a.m. As he drove out of the city, he wondered what had possessed him to say he would go. He had such a profound dislike of funerals. And yet that was his objective. Since he had plenty of time, he decided against taking the direct route to Malmö. Instead he took the coast road by way of Svarte and Trelleborg. He glimpsed the sea on his left-hand side. A ferry was approaching the harbour.

He thought about the fact that this was his fourth funeral in seven years. First there had been his colleague Rydberg, who died of cancer. It had been a protracted and painful end. Wallander had visited him often at home and finally at the hospital as slowly he wasted away. Rydberg's death had been a huge blow. It was Rydberg who had made a police officer of him, taught him to ask the right questions. Through watching him work, Wallander had learned how to read the information hidden at the scene of a crime. Before he started working with Rydberg, Wallander had been a very average policeman. It was only after Rydberg's death that Wallander realised he had become not only a stubborn and energetic detective, but a good one. He still held long conversations with Rydberg in his head when he tackled a new investigation and didn't know quite how to proceed. Almost every day he experienced a twinge of loss and sadness at Rydberg's absence. Those feelings would never leave him.

Then there was his father, who had died unexpectedly. He had collapsed from a stroke in his studio. That was three years ago. Even now, Wallander sometimes had trouble grasping the fact that his father wasn't there any more, surrounded by the smell of turpentine and oil paint. The house in Löderup had been sold. Wallander had driven past it a few times since then and seen that new people had moved in. He had never stopped and taken a closer look. From time to time he went to his father's grave, always with an inexplicable feeling of guilt. These visits were getting more infrequent. It was getting harder for him to conjure up his father's face.

A person who died eventually became a person who had never existed.

Then there was Svedberg, one of his own officers, who had died a terrible death only a year ago. That had made him realise how little he knew