Firewall - By Henning Mankell & Ebba Segerberg Page 0,2

about the people he worked with. During the investigation he had uncovered a more complicated network of relationships in Svedberg's life than he would ever have dreamed of.

And now he was on his way to funeral number four, the only one he really didn't have to go to. She had called on Wednesday, just as Wallander was about to leave the office. It was late afternoon and he had a headache from concentrating on a depressing case involving smuggled cigarettes. The tracks seemed to lead to northern Greece, then went up in smoke. Wallander had exchanged information with both German and Greek police. But still they had not managed to arrest the smugglers. He realised now that the driver of the truck with the smuggled goods probably had no idea what had been in his load. All the same, he would go to jail for a couple of months at least. Nothing else would come of it. Wallander was sure contraband cigarettes landed by every ferry in Ystad. He doubted they would ever put a stop to it.

His day had also been poisoned by an argument with the prosecutor, the man filling in for Per Åkeson, who had taken charitable work in the Sudan two years ago and seemed to be in no hurry to come back. Wallander was filled with envy each time he received a letter from Åkeson. He had actually done what Wallander had only fantasised about: starting all over again.

Wallander was about to turn 50 and he knew, though he could scarcely admit it, that the decisive events of his life were behind him. He would never be anything but a police officer. The best he could do in the years leading up to retirement was to try to become better at solving crimes, and to pass on his knowledge to the younger generation. But there were no life-changing decisions in wait for him, no Sudan.

He was just about to put his jacket on when the telephone rang. At first he hadn't known who she was. Then he realised she was Stefan Fredman's mother. Memories and isolated images from three years ago rushed back in the space of a few seconds. It was the case of the boy who had painted himself to look like a Native American warrior and had revenged himself on the men who had driven his sister insane and filled his younger brother with terror. One of the victims had been the boy's own father. Wallander flinched at one of the last, most disturbing images: the boy kneeling by his sister's dead body, weeping. He didn't know what had happened afterwards, except that the boy had been sent to a secure psychiatric ward rather than prison.

Now Anette, his mother, had called to say the boy was dead. He had thrown himself out of a window. Wallander had expressed his condolences and they had been genuine, though perhaps what he felt was a sense of hopelessness and despair rather than grief. He had not yet understood why she had called him. He stood with the receiver to his ear, trying to recall her face. He had only met her on two or three occasions, in her home in a suburb of Malmö, when he had been struggling with the idea that a 14-year-old boy had committed these heinous crimes. She had been shy and tense. There was something cringing about her, as if she always expected everything to turn out for the worst. In her case it often did. Wallander remembered and wondered if she were addicted to alcohol or prescription medication. But he didn't know. He could hardly bring her face to mind. Her voice he did not recognise at all.

She wanted Wallander to be at the funeral. There were so few people coming. She was the only one left now, apart from Stefan's younger brother Jens. Wallander had, after all, been someone who wished them well. He said he'd be there. He had changed his mind the moment he said it, but it was too late.

He rang one of Stefan's doctors, to try and find out what became of the boy, after his admittance to the psychiatric ward. He was told that Stefan had hardly said a word during the past few years, had shut himself off from the world outside. But the boy who came smashing down onto that slab of concrete on the hospital grounds had worn full-blown warrior warpaint. That disturbing mask of paint and blood held little