Firewall by Henning Mankell Page A

the first impression was something he always came back to.
A person lived here in this room. She was the one he was looking for. The bed was made, heaped with pink and flowery cushions. On one of the walls there was a shelf full of teddy bears. There was a mirror on the wardrobe door and a thick rug on the floor. There was a desk by the window, but there was nothing on its top. Wallander stood in the doorway for a long time and looked into the room. This was where Sonja Hökberg lived. He entered the room, kneeled by the bed and looked underneath it. There was a thin covering of dust everywhere except in one spot where an object had left an outline of itself. Wallander shivered. He suspected it was the spot where the hammer had been found. He got up and opened the drawers of the desk. None of them was locked. There weren't even any locks. He didn't know exactly what he was looking for. Maybe a diary or some photographs. But there was nothing in the desk that caught his attention. He sat down on the bed and thought about his meeting with the girl.
There was something that had struck him as soon as he saw her room from the doorway.
Something which didn't add up. Hökberg and her room didn't go together. He couldn't imagine her here among all the pink cushions and the teddy bears. But it was her room. He tried to work out what it could mean. Which was closer to the truth – the indifferent girl he had met at the police station, or the room where she had lived and hidden a hammer under her bed?
Many years ago Rydberg had taught him how to listen: each room has its own life and breath. You have to listen for it. A room can tell you many secrets about the person who lives there.
At first Wallander had been sceptical about Rydberg's advice, but in time he had come to realise that Rydberg had imparted a crucial piece of knowledge.
Wallander's head was starting to ache, especially in his temples. He got up and opened the wardrobe door. There were clothes on hangers and shoes on the floor. On the inside of the door was a poster from a film called The Devil's Advocate. The star was Al Pacino. Wallander remembered him from The Godfather. He shut the wardrobe door and sat on the chair by the desk. That gave him a new angle from which to view the room.
There's something missing, he thought. He remembered what Linda's room had looked like when she was a teenager. There had been some stuffed animals of course. But above all there were the pictures of her idols, who changed from time to time but were always there in some form or another.
There was nothing like that in Hökberg's room. She was 19 and all she had was a movie poster inside her wardrobe.
Wallander remained there for a few more minutes, then he left the room and walked back down the stairs. Hökberg looked at him carefully.
"Did you find anything?"
"I just wanted to have a look around."
"What's going to happen to her?"
Wallander shook his head. "She'll be tried as an adult. She's confessed to the crime. They're not going to be easy on her."
Hökberg didn't say anything. Wallander could see he was pained.
Wallander wrote down the number for Hökberg's sister-in-law in Höör. Then he left the townhouse and drove back to the station, feeling worse and worse. He was going to go home after the press conference and crawl into bed.
As he walked into reception, Irene waved him over. Wallander saw that she was pale.
"Something's happened?" he said.
"I don't know," she said. "They were looking for you, and as usual you didn't have your mobile with you."
"Who was looking for me?"
"Everyone."
Wallander lost his patience. "What do you mean 'everyone'? Give me some names, dammit!"
"Martinsson. And Lisa."
Wallander went straight to Martinsson's office. Hansson was there.
"What's happened?"
Martinsson said: "Hökberg has escaped."
Wallander stared at him in disbelief. "Escaped?"
"Gone. It happened about an hour ago. We've put all available personnel on the search, but she's disappeared into thin