Sidetracked

CHAPTER 3

Afterwards Wallander would remember the burning girl in the rape field the way you remember, with the greatest reluctance, a distant nightmare sooner forgotten. If he appeared to maintain at least an outward sense of calm for the rest of that evening and far into the night, later he could recall nothing but trivial details. Martinsson, Hansson and especially Ann-Britt Hoglund had been astonished by his calm. But they couldn’t see through the shield he had set up to protect himself. Inside him there was devastation, like a house that had collapsed.

He got back to his flat just after 2 a.m. Only then, when he sat down on his sofa, still in his filthy clothes and muddy boots, did the shield crumble. He poured himself a glass of whisky. The doors of his balcony stood open and let in the balmy night, and he cried like a baby.

The girl had been a child. She reminded him of his own daughter Linda. During his years as a policeman he had learned to be prepared for whatever might await him when he arrived at a place where someone had met a violent or sudden death. He had seen people who had hanged themselves, stuck a shotgun in their mouth, or blown themselves to bits. Somehow he had learned to endure what he saw and push it aside. But he couldn’t when there were children or young people involved. Then he was as vulnerable as when he was first a policeman. He knew that many of his colleagues reacted the same way. When children or young people died violently, for no reason, the defences erected out of habit collapsed. And that’s how it would be for Wallander as long as he continued working as a policeman.

He had completed the initial phase of the investigation in an exemplary manner. With traces of vomit still clinging to his mouth he had run up to Salomonsson, who was watching his crop burn with astonishment, and asked where the telephone was. Since Salomonsson didn’t seem to understand the question, maybe didn’t even hear it, he dashed past him into the house. He was assailed by the acrid smell of the unwashed old man. In the hall he found the telephone. He dialled 90-000, and the operator said later that Wallander had sounded quite calm when he described what had happened and asked for a full team to be sent out.

The flames from the field were shining through the windows like floodlights lighting up the summer evening. He called Martinsson at home, talking first with his daughter and then his wife before Martinsson was called in from the back yard. As succinctly as possible he described what had happened and asked Martinsson to call Hansson and Hoglund too. Then he went out to the kitchen and washed his face under the tap. When he came back outside, Salomonsson was still rooted to the same spot, as if mesmerised. A car arrived with some of his closest neighbours in it. But Wallander shouted to them to stay back, not allowing them to approach Salomonsson. In the distance he heard sirens from the fire engines, which almost always arrived first. Soon afterwards, two squad cars of uniformed officers and an ambulance arrived. Peter Edler was directing the firefighting, a man in whom Wallander had total confidence.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“I’ll explain later,” said Wallander. “But don’t stamp around in the field. There’s a body out there.”

“The house isn’t threatened,” said Edler. “We’ll work on containing the fire.”

Edler turned to Salomonsson and asked how wide the tractor paths and the ditches between the fields were. One of the ambulance crew came over. Wallander had met him before but couldn’t remember his name.

“Is anyone hurt?” he asked.

Wallander shook his head.

“One person dead,” he replied. “She’s lying out in the field.”

“Then we’ll need a hearse,” said the ambulance driver. “What happened?”

Wallander didn’t feel like answering. Instead he turned to Noren, who was the officer he knew best.

“There’s a dead woman in the field,” he said. “Until the fire is put out we can’t do anything but block it off.”

Noren nodded.

“Was it an accident?” he asked.

“More like a suicide,” said Wallander.

A few minutes later, as Martinsson arrived, Noren handed him a paper cup of coffee. He stared at his hand and wondered why it wasn’t shaking. Hansson and Ann-Britt Hoglund arrived in Hansson’s car, and he told his colleagues what had happened.

Again and again he used the same phrase: She burned like a flare.

“This is just terrible,” said Hoglund.

“It was worse than you can imagine,” said Wallander. “Not to be able to do anything. I hope none of you ever has to experience anything like this.”

Silently they watched the firefighters work. A large group of bystanders had gathered, but the police kept them back.

“What did she look like?” asked Martinsson. “Did you see her?”

Wallander nodded.

“Someone ought to talk to the old man,” he said. “His name is Salomonsson.”

Hansson took Salomonsson into his kitchen. Hoglund went over and talked to Peter Edler. The fire had begun to die down. When she returned she told them it would be all over shortly.

“Rape burns fast,” she said. “And the field is wet. It rained yesterday.”

“She was young,” said Wallander, “with black hair and dark skin. She was dressed in a yellow windcheater. I think she had jeans on. I don’t know about her feet. And she was frightened.”

“What of?” asked Martinsson.

Wallander thought a moment.

“She was frightened of me,” he replied. “I’m not absolutely sure, but I think she was even more terrified when I called out that I was a policeman and told her to stop. But beyond that, I have no idea.”

“She understood everything you said?”

“She understood the word ‘police’ at least. I’m certain of that.”

All that remained of the fire was a thick pall of smoke.

“There was no-one else out there in the field?” asked Hoglund. “You’re sure she was alone?”

“No,” said Wallander. “I’m not sure at all. But I didn’t see anyone but her.”

They stood in silence. Who was she? Wallander asked himself. Where did she come from? Why did she set herself on fire? If she wanted to die, why did she choose to torture herself?

Hansson came back from the house, where he had been talking with Salomonsson.

“We should do what they do in the States,” he said. “We should have menthol to smear under our noses. Damn, the smell in there. Old men shouldn’t be allowed to outlive their wives.”

“Get one of the ambulance crew to ask him how he’s feeling,” said Wallander. “He must be suffering from shock.”

Martinsson went to deliver the message. Peter Edler took off his helmet and stood next to Wallander.

“It’s nearly out,” he said. “But I’ll leave a truck here tonight.”

“When can we go out in the field?” asked Wallander.

“Within an hour. The smoke will hang around for a while yet. But the field has already started to cool off.”

Wallander took Peter Edler aside.

“What am I going to see?” he asked. “She poured a five-litre container of petrol over herself. And the way everything exploded around her, she must have already poured more on the ground.”

“It won’t be pretty,” Edler replied candidly. “There won’t be a lot left.”

Wallander said nothing. He turned to Hansson.

“No matter how we look at it, we know that it was suicide,” said Hansson. “We have the best witness we can get: a policeman.”

“What did Salomonsson say?”

“That he’d never seen her before she appeared at 5 a.m. this morning. There’s no reason to think he’s not telling the truth.”

“So we don’t know who she is,” said Wallander, “and we don’t know what she was running from either.”

Hansson looked at him in surprise.

“Why should she be running from something?” he asked.

“She was frightened,” said Wallander. “She was hiding. And when a policeman arrived she set herself on fire.”

“We don’t know what she was thinking,” said Hansson. “You may be imagining that she was frightened.”

“No,” said Wallander. “I’ve seen enough fear in my time to know what it looks like.”

One of the ambulance crew came walking towards them.

“We’re taking the old boy with us to the hospital,” he said. “He looks in pretty bad shape.”

Wallander nodded.

Soon the forensic team arrived. Wallander tried to point out where in the smoke the body might be located.

“Maybe you should go home,” said Hoglund. “You’ve seen enough this evening.”

“No,” said Wallander. “I’ll stay.”

Eventually the smoke had cleared, and Peter Edler said they could start their examination. Even though the summer evening was still light, Wallander had ordered floodlights to be brought in.

“There might be something out there apart from a body,” said Wallander. “Watch your step, and everyone who doesn’t have work to do out there should stay back.”

He realised then that he really didn’t want to do what had to be done. He would far rather have driven away and left the responsibility to the others. He walked out into the field alone. The others watched. He was afraid of what he would see, afraid that the knot he had in his stomach would burst.

He reached her. Her arms had stiffened in the upstretched motion he had seen her make before she died, surrounded by the raging flames. Her hair and face, along with her clothes, were burned off. All that was left was a blackened body that still radiated terror and desolation. Wallander turned around and walked back across the charred ground. For a moment he was afraid he was going to faint.

The forensic technicians started to work in the harsh glare of the floodlights, where moths swarmed. Hansson had opened Salomonsson’s kitchen window to drive out the smell. They pulled out the chairs and sat around the kitchen table. At Hoglund’s suggestion they made coffee on Salomonsson’s ancient stove.

“All he has is ground coffee,” she said after searching through the drawers and cupboards. “Is that all right?”

“That’s fine,” said Wallander. “Just as long as it’s strong.”

Hanging on the wall beside the ancient cupboards with sliding doors was an old-fashioned clock. Wallander noticed that it had stopped. He had seen a clock like that once before, at Baiba’s flat in Riga, and it too had had a pair of immobile hands. As though they were trying to ward off events that had not yet happened by stopping time, he thought. Baiba’s husband was killed execution-style on a frozen night in Riga’s harbour. A lone girl appears as if shipwrecked in a sea of rape and takes her life by inflicting the worst pain imaginable.

She had set herself on fire as though she were her own enemy, he thought. It wasn’t him, the policeman with the waving arms, she had wanted to escape. It was herself.

He was jolted out of his reverie by the silence around the table. They were looking at him and waiting for him to take the initiative. Through the window he could see the technicians moving slowly about in the glare of the floodlights. A camera flash went off, then another.

“Did somebody call for the hearse?” asked Hansson.

For Wallander it was as if someone had struck him with a sledgehammer. The simple, matter-of-fact question from Hansson brought him back to painful reality.

The images flickered inside his head. He imagined driving through the beautiful Swedish summertime, Barbara Hendricks’s voice strong and clear. Then a girl skitters away like a frightened animal in the field of tall rape. The catastrophe strikes. Something happens that shouldn’t. The hearse on its way to carry off the summer itself.

“Prytz knows what to do,” said Martinsson, and Wallander recognised the ambulance driver whose name he’d forgotten earlier.

He knew he had to say something.

“What do we know?” he began tentatively, as if each word were offering resistance. “An elderly farmer, living alone, rises early and discovers a strange woman in his rape field. He tries calling to her, to get her to leave, since he doesn’t want his crop destroyed. She hides and then reappears, again and again. He calls us late in the afternoon. I drive out here, since the regular officers are all busy. To be honest, I have trouble taking him seriously. I decide to leave and contact social services, since he seems so confused. But the woman suddenly pops up in the field again. So I try to reach her, but she moves away. She lifts a plastic container over her head, drenches herself in petrol, and sets fire to herself with a cigarette lighter. The rest you know. She was alone, she had a container of petrol, and she took her own life.”

He broke off abruptly, as if he no longer knew what to say. A moment later he went on.

“We don’t know who she is,” he said. “We don’t know why she killed herself. I can give a fairly good description of her. But that’s all.”

Ann-Britt Hoglund got some cracked coffee cups out of a cupboard. Martinsson went out into the yard to have a pee. When he returned, Wallander continued his cautious summary.

“The most important thing is to find out who she was. We’ll search through all missing persons. Since I think she was dark-skinned, we can start by putting a little extra focus on checking on refugees and the refugee camps. Then we’ll have to wait for what the forensic technicians come up with.”

“At any rate, we know there was no crime committed,” said Hansson. “So our job is to determine who she was.”

“She must have come from somewhere,” said Hoglund. “Did she walk here? Did she ride a bike? Did she drive? Where did she get the petrol?”

“And why here, of all places?” said Martinsson. “Why Salomonsson’s place? This farm is way off the beaten track.”

The questions hung in the air. Noren came into the kitchen and said that some reporters had arrived who wanted to know what happened. Wallander, who knew that he had to get moving, stood up.

“I’ll talk to them,” he said.

“Tell them the truth,” said Hansson.

“What else?” Wallander replied in surprise.

He went out into the yard and recognised the two newspaper reporters. One was a young woman who worked for Ystad Recorder, the other an older man from Labour News.

“It looks like a film shoot,” said the woman, pointing at the floodlights in the charred field.

“It’s not,” said Wallander.

He told them what had happened. A woman had died in a fire. There was no suspicion of criminal activity. Since they still didn’t know who she was, he didn’t want to say anything more at this time.

“Can we take some pictures?” asked the man from Labour News.

“You can take as many pictures as you like,” replied Wallander. “But you’ll have to take them from here. No-one is allowed to go into the field.”

The reporters drove off in their cars. Wallander was about to return to the kitchen when he saw one of the technicians working out in the field waving to him. Wallander went over. It was Sven Nyberg, the surly but brilliant head of forensics. They stopped at the edge of the area covered by the floodlights. A slight breeze came wafting from the sea across the field. Wallander tried to avoid looking at the body, with its upstretched arms.

“I think we’ve found something,” said Nyberg.

In his hand he had a little plastic bag. He handed it to Wallander, who moved under one of the floodlights. In the bag was a gold necklace with a tiny pendant.

“It has an inscription,” said Nyberg. “The letters ‘D.M.S.’ and it’s a picture of the Madonna.”

“Why didn’t it melt?” asked Wallander.

“A fire in a field doesn’t generate enough heat to melt jewellery,” Nyberg replied. He sounded tired.

“This is exactly what we needed,” said Wallander.

“We’ll be ready to take her away soon,” said Nyberg, nodding towards the black hearse waiting at the edge of the field.

“How does it look?” Wallander asked cautiously.

Nyberg shrugged.

“The teeth should tell us something. The pathologists are excellent. They can find out how old she was. With DNA technology they can also tell you whether she was born in this country of Swedish parents or if she came from somewhere else.”

“There’s coffee in the kitchen,” said Wallander.

“No thanks,” said Nyberg. “I’ll be done here pretty soon. In the morning we’ll go over the entire field. Since there was no crime it can wait until then.”

Wallander went back to the house. He laid the plastic bag containing the necklace on the kitchen table.

“Now we have something to go on,” he said. “A pendant, a Madonna. Inscribed with the initials ‘D.M.S.’ I suggest you all go home now. I’ll stay here a while longer.”

“We’ll meet at nine o’clock tomorrow morning,” said Hansson, getting up.

“I wonder who she was,” said Martinsson. “The Swedish summertime is too beautiful and too brief for something like this to happen.”

They parted in the yard. Hoglund lingered behind.

“I’m thankful I didn’t have to see it,” she said. “I think I understand what you’re going through.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.

When the cars had gone he sat down on the steps of the house. The floodlights shone as if over a bleak stage on which a play was being performed, with him the only spectator.

The wind had started to blow. They were still waiting for the warmth of summer. The night air was cold, and Wallander realised that he was freezing sitting there on the steps. How intensely he longed for the summer heat. He hoped it would come soon.

After a while he got up and went inside the house and washed the coffee cups.