The Fifth Woman

CHAPTER 13

Wallander was awake thinking about his father and Rydberg lying in the same cemetery when the telephone next to his bed rang. He grabbed it before the ringing woke Linda. With a feeling of mounting helplessness he listened to what the officer on duty had to say. Information was still sparse. Officers hadn’t yet reached the woods south of Marsvinsholm. It was possible that the runner had been mistaken, but that was unlikely. The officer thought he sounded unusually lucid even though he was breathless and frightened. Wallander said he’d come at once. He dressed as quietly as he could, but Linda came out in her nightgown as he sat in the kitchen writing her a note.

“What’s happened?” she asked.

“They found a man dead in the woods,” he replied. “That means they call me.”

She shook her head.

“Don’t you get scared?”

“Why should I be scared?”

“About all the people who are dying.”

He sensed rather than understood what she was trying to say.

“I can’t. It’s my job. Somebody has to deal with it.”

He promised to be back in plenty of time to drive her to the airport in the morning.

It wasn’t until he was on his way out to Marsvinsholm that it occurred to him that it might be Gosta Runfeldt who had been found in the woods. He had just left the town behind him when his phone rang. Police officers had confirmed the report.

“Any identification on him?” asked Wallander.

“No. Sounds like he barely had any clothes on. It looks pretty bad.”

Wallander felt his stomach tying itself in knots, but he didn’t say anything.

“They’ll meet you at the crossroads. Take the first exit towards Marsvinsholm.”

Wallander hung up and accelerated. He was dreading the sight that awaited him.

He saw the squad car at a distance and slowed to a stop. An officer was standing outside the car. He recognised Peters. Wallander rolled down his window and gave him an inquiring look.

“It’s not a pretty sight,” said Peters.

Wallander knew what that meant. Peters had plenty of experience. He wouldn’t use those words casually.

“Has he been identified?”

“He barely has a stitch on. Go see for yourself.”

“And the man who found him?”

“He’s there too.”

Peters went back to his car. Wallander drove behind him. They reached a clearing. The road ended near the remains of a logging operation.

“We’ll have to walk the last stretch,” Peters said.

Wallander got his gumboots out of the boot of his car. Peters and his partner, a young officer named Bergman who Wallander didn’t really know, had brought powerful torches. They followed a path that led uphill to a little creek. There was a strong smell of autumn in the air. Wallander realised he should have worn a heavier jumper. If he had to stay out in the woods all night he was going to get cold.

“We’re almost there,” Peters said.

Wallander knew he said it to warn him to brace himself. Even so, the sight that greeted him took him by surprise. The two torches shone with macabre precision on a man who hung, half-naked, tied to a tree. The beams of light quivered. Wallander stood quite still. Close by a night bird cried. He advanced cautiously. Peters shone his light so Wallander could see where he was putting his feet. The man’s head and torso had fallen forward. Wallander got down on his knees to look at his face, and confirmed what he had suspected. Even though the photographs he had seen in Runfeldt’s flat were several years old, there was no doubt that it was him. Now they knew what had happened.

Wallander got to his feet and took a step back. There was no longer any doubt in his mind about another thing. There was a connection between Eriksson and Runfeldt. The killer’s language was the same, even if the choice of words was different this time. A pungee pit and a tree. It simply couldn’t be a coincidence.

He turned towards Peters. “Get the team,” he said.

Peters nodded. Wallander discovered he had left his telephone in the car. He asked Bergman to get it for him, and to bring the torch from the glove compartment.

“Where’s the man who found him?” he asked.

Peters shone his torch to one side. On a rock sat a man in a tracksuit, his face buried in his hands.

“His name is Lars Olsson,” Peters said. “He lives on a farm near here.”

“What was he doing out in the woods in the middle of the night?”

“He’s an orienteer,” said Peters, handing him his torch.

Wallander went up to the man, who looked up quickly when the beam struck his face. He was very pale. Wallander introduced himself and sat down on a rock next to him, shivering involuntarily.

“So you’re the one who found him.”

Olsson told Wallander his story. About the bad movie on TV and his training run; how he’d decided to take a shortcut, and how he’d caught sight of the man in the beam of his headlamp.

“You’ve given a very exact time,” Wallander said, remembering what the officer on duty had told him.

“I looked at my watch,” Olsson replied. “It’s a habit of mine — or rather a bad habit. When something important happens I look at my watch. If I could have, I would have looked at my watch when I was born.”

Wallander smiled at him.

“So you take a run out here almost every night.”

“I ran here last night, but earlier in the evening. I ran two routes. The long one first, followed by the short one. Then I took a shortcut.”

“What time was that?”

“Between 9.30 and 10.00 p.m.”

“And you didn’t see anything then?”

“No.”

“Could he have been here by the tree without you seeing him?”

Olsson thought for a moment and then shook his head.

“I always pass close to that tree. I would have seen him.”

Wallander got up from the rock. There were torches approaching through the woods.

“Who would do something like this?” Olsson asked.

“That’s what I’m wondering too,” Wallander replied.

As Bergman took down Olsson’s name and phone number, Peters talked to the station. Wallander took a deep breath and approached the man hanging in the ropes. It astonished him for a moment that he wasn’t thinking about his father at all, now that he was in the presence of death. But deep inside he knew why. He had been through it so many times before. Dead people weren’t just dead, they had nothing human left in them. After the first wave of disgust passed, it was like approaching any other lifeless object.

Wallander felt the back of Runfeldt’s neck cautiously. All body heat was gone. He hadn’t really expected there to be any. Trying to determine the time of death outdoors was difficult. Wallander looked at the man’s bare chest. The colour of the skin told him nothing about how long he had been hanging there either. Wallander shone his torch at Rundfeldt’s throat and saw bruising. That could mean that he had been hanged. Next he inspected the ropes. They were wound round his body from his thighs up to his ribs. The knots were simple, and the ropes weren’t tied very tightly. It surprised him.

He took a step backwards and shone his light on the whole body. Then he walked around the tree, watching carefully where he put his feet. He made only one circuit. He assumed that Peters had told Bergman not to tramp around unnecessarily. Peters was still talking on the phone. Wallander needed another jumper. He knew he should keep a spare in his car. It was going to be a long night.

He tried to imagine the sequence of events. The loosely tied ropes made him nervous. He thought about Eriksson. Runfeldt’s murder might provide the solution. When they resumed the investigative work they would have to develop double vision. The clues would keep pointing in two directions at the same time. This could increase their confusion, and make the landscape of the investigation more and more difficult to define.

For a moment Wallander turned off his torch and thought in the dark. Peters was still talking on the phone. Bergman stood motionless nearby. Gosta Runfeldt hung dead in his loosely tied ropes. Is this a beginning, a middle, or an end? Wallander wondered. Do we have another serial killer on our hands? An even more difficult chain of events to unravel than we had in the summer? He had no answers. It was too early, far too early.

He heard engines in the distance. Peters went to meet the emergency vehicles that were approaching. Wallander thought of Linda and hoped she was asleep. Whatever happened, he would drive her to the airport in the morning. Suddenly a great wave of grief for his father surged through him. He longed for Baiba. And he was exhausted. He felt burnt out. All the energy he had felt on his return from Rome was gone. There was nothing left.

He forced himself to push away these dismal thoughts. Martinsson and Hansson came tramping through the trees, followed by Hoglund and Nyberg. After them came the ambulance men and forensic technicians. Then Svedberg. Finally a doctor. They gave the impression of a poorly organised caravan that had wound up in the wrong place. Wallander started by gathering his closest colleagues round him in a circle. A floodlight hooked up to a portable generator was already aiming its eerie light on the man tied to the tree. Wallander couldn’t help but be reminded of the macabre experience they had had by the ditch on Eriksson’s property. It was being repeated. The framework was different and yet the same. The killer’s designs were related.

“It’s Gosta Runfeldt,” said Wallander. “We’ll have to wake up Vanja Andersson and bring her out here to give us a positive identification as soon as possible. We can wait until we’ve taken him down from the tree. She doesn’t need to see that.”

He described how Runfeldt had been found.

“He’s been missing for almost three weeks,” he went on. “But if I’m not mistaken, and if Lars Olsson is right, he’s been dead for less than 24 hours. At least he hasn’t been tied to this tree any longer than that. So where has he been all this time?”

“I don’t believe that this is a coincidence. It has to be the same killer. We must find out what these two men have in common. So there are three investigations: Eriksson, Runfeldt, and the two of them together.”

“What happens if we can’t find a connection?” Svedberg asked.

“We will,” replied Wallander firmly. “Sooner or later. The planning of both of these murders seems to exclude the possibility that the victims were chosen at random. Both men were killed with a specific aim in mind, for specific reasons.”

“Gosta Runfeldt couldn’t have been homosexual,” Martinsson said. “He was married with two children.”

“He could have been bisexual,” Wallander said. “But it’s too soon for those questions. We have things to do that are more urgent.”

The circle broke up. It hadn’t taken long to organise their work. Wallander went to speak to Nyberg, who was waiting for the doctor to finish.

“So it’s happened again,” Nyberg said in a weary voice.

“Yes,” Wallander said, “and we have to get through it one more time.”

“Just yesterday I decided to take a couple of weeks’ holiday,” Nyberg said. “As soon as we find out who killed Eriksson. I thought I’d go to the Canary Islands. Not particularly imaginative, maybe — but warmer.”

Nyberg seldom talked about personal matters. Wallander could see that he was exhausted. His workload was unreasonable. Wallander decided to take it up with Chief Holgersson. They didn’t have the right to go on exploiting Nyberg’s dedication. Just then he saw that the chief had arrived, and stood talking to Hansson and Hoglund. She too had a lot on her plate, Wallander thought. With this second murder the media would have a field day. Her predecessor, Bjork, could never handle pressure. Now they’d see if she could.

Wallander knew that Holgersson was married to a man who worked for a company that exported computers overseas. They had two grown children, and had bought a house in Hedeskoga, north of Ystad. Wallander hoped her husband gave her plenty of support. She’d need it.

The doctor got to his feet. Wallander had met him before, but he couldn’t remember his name.

“It looks like he was strangled,” the doctor said.

“Not hanged?”

The doctor held out his hands.

“Strangled with bare hands,” he said. “It causes different types of pressure wounds than a rope. You can see the marks from the thumbs quite clearly.”

A strong man, Wallander thought instantly. A person in good shape, who has no qualms about killing with his bare hands.

“How long ago?” he asked.

“It’s impossible to say for sure. Within the last 24 hours, not longer. You’ll have to wait for the pathologist’s report.”

“Can we take him down?”

“I’ve finished,” said the doctor.

“Then I can get started,” muttered Nyberg.

Hoglund came up beside them. “Vanja Andersson is here. She’s waiting in a car down there.”

“How did she take the news?” asked Wallander.

“It’s a hell of a way to be woken up, of course, but I got the feeling she wasn’t surprised.”

Nyberg had unwound the ropes. Runfeldt’s body lay on a stretcher.

“Bring her up here,” Wallander said. “Then she can go straight home.”

Vanja Andersson was very pale. Wallander noticed she was dressed in black. She looked at the dead man’s face, took a deep breath, and nodded.

“You can identify him as Gosta Runfeldt?” Wallander asked. He groaned inwardly at how clumsy this sounded.

“He’s so thin,” she murmured.

Wallander pricked up his ears. “What do you mean, thin?”

“His face is all sunken in. He didn’t look like this three weeks ago.”

Wallander knew that death could alter a person’s face dramatically, but he guessed that Vanja Andersson was talking about something else.

“You mean he’s lost weight since the last time you saw him?”

“Yes. He’s grown terribly thin.”

Wallander sensed that what she was saying was important.

“You don’t have to stay here any longer,” he said. “We’ll drive you home.”

She gave him a forlorn look.

“What am I supposed to do with the shop?” she asked. “And all the flowers?”

“Tomorrow you can leave it closed, I’m sure,” Wallander answered. “Start with that. Don’t think any further ahead.”

She nodded mutely and allowed Hoglund to lead her away. Wallander thought about what she had said. For almost three weeks Runfeldt had been missing without a trace. When he reappeared, tied to a tree and possibly strangled, he was inexplicably thin. Wallander knew what that meant: imprisonment.

He stood still. Imprisonment could be related to a wartime situation. Soldiers take prisoners.

He was interrupted when Chief Holgersson stumbled and almost fell as she walked over to him.

“You’re freezing,” she said.

“I forgot to bring a warmer jumper,” Wallander replied. “Some things you never learn.”

She nodded at the stretcher. It was being carried off towards the ambulance.

“What do you think of all this?” she asked.

“Same killer. It wouldn’t make sense to think otherwise.”

“The doctor says he was strangled.”

“I try not to draw conclusions too soon,” Wallander said. “But I think I can imagine how it all happened. He was alive when he was tied to the tree. Maybe unconscious, but he was strangled here. And he didn’t put up any resistance.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

“The ropes were tied loosely. If he’d wanted to, he could have struggled free.”

“Couldn’t the loose ropes indicate that he did try to free himself?”

Good question, thought Wallander. Lisa Holgersson is a detective, all right.

“That could be,” he replied. “But I don’t think so, because of something Vanja Andersson said. That he had grown terribly thin.”

“I don’t get the connection.”

“He would have been very weak.”

She understood.

“He was left hanging on the ropes,” Wallander went on. “The killer didn’t try to hide the body. It is very like what happened with Eriksson.”

“Why here?” she asked. “Why tie a person to a tree? Why this brutality?”

“When we understand that, maybe we’ll know why this happened in the first place,” Wallander said.

“Have you any ideas?”

“I have plenty of ideas, but I think the best thing we can do now is let Nyberg and his people work in peace. It’s more important to have a meeting in Ystad than to wander around out here wearing ourselves out. There’s nothing left to see, anyway.”

She didn’t object. By 2 a.m. Nyberg and his forensic technicians were alone in the woods. It had started to drizzle and the wind came up. Wallander was the last to leave the scene.

What do we do now? he asked himself. How do we proceed? We don’t have a motive or a suspect. All we have is a diary that belonged to a man named Harald Berggren. A bird-watcher and a passionate orchid lover have been killed with consummate savagery.

He tried to remember what Hoglund had said. It was important. Something about the masculine world of Berggren. This made him think of a killer with a military background. Harald Berggren had been a mercenary. A person who defended neither his country, nor a cause. A man who killed people for a monthly wage, paid in cold cash.

At least we have a starting point, he thought. We have to stick with it until it collapses. He went over to say good-bye to Nyberg.

“Is there anything special you want us to look for?” he asked.

“No, but look for anything that reminds you of what happened to Eriksson.”

“I think everything does,” Nyberg said. “Only the bamboo stakes are missing.”

“I want dogs up here early tomorrow,” Wallander said.

“I’ll probably still be here,” said Nyberg dismally.

“I’m going to bring up your work situation with Lisa,” Wallander said, hoping it would at least offer him a modicum of encouragement.

“It probably won’t do any good.”

“Well, it won’t do any good not to try,” Wallander said, putting an end to the conversation.

By 3 a.m. they were all gathered in the conference room. Wallander looked at the tired, sallow faces round the table, and realised that his main task was to infuse the investigative team with renewed energy. From experience he knew that there were moments in any investigation when it seemed as though all their self-confidence was gone. That moment had arrived unusually early this time.

We could have used a calm autumn, Wallander thought. The summer wore us out. He sat down and Hansson brought him a cup of coffee.

“This isn’t going to be easy,” he began. “What we feared most has happened. Gosta Runfeldt has been murdered. Apparently by the same person who killed Holger Eriksson. We don’t know what this means, and we don’t know whether we’re going to have more unpleasant surprises. We don’t know if this will be similar to what we went through this summer. We shouldn’t draw any parallels beyond the fact that the same man has been at work. There are a lot of differences between these two crimes. More differences than similarities.”

He paused for comments. No-one had anything to say.

“We’ll have to continue working on a wide front. We have to track down Harald Berggren. We have to find out why Runfeldt wasn’t on that plane to Nairobi. We have to find out why he ordered sophisticated bugging equipment just before he died. We have to find a connection between these two men, who seem to have lived their lives with no contact with one another. Since the victims were obviously not chosen at random, there has to be some kind of link.”

Still nobody had any comments. Wallander decided to adjourn the meeting. What they needed more than anything was a few hours’ sleep. They would meet again in the morning.

Outside, the wind and rain had got worse. As Wallander hurried across the wet car park to his car, he thought about Nyberg and his forensic technicians. He also thought about Vanja Andersson having said that Runfeldt had become emaciated in the three weeks that he was missing. This had to mean imprisonment. But where had he been held captive? Why? And by whom?