The Fifth Woman

CHAPTER 17

They watched tensely as the picture began to emerge in the developing bath. Wallander wasn’t sure what he was expecting, or hoping for, as he stood with his colleagues in the darkroom. The red light made him feel as though they were waiting for something indecent to happen. Nyberg was developing the film. He was hobbling around with a crutch, and Hoglund had warned that he was in an especially grumpy mood.

They had made progress while Wallander had been busy with the reporters. There was no doubt that Runfeldt had been working as a private detective. In the various client records they had discovered, they could see that he’d been doing it for at least ten years.

“His activities were limited,” Hoglund said. “He had not more than seven or eight cases a year. It seems as though this was something he did in his spare time.”

Svedberg had made a swift survey of the types of assignments Runfeldt had taken on.

“About half the cases have to do with suspected infidelity,” he said. “Strangely enough, his clients were mostly men who suspected their wives.”

“Why is that strange?” Wallander asked.

“I just didn’t think it would be that way around,” was all Svedberg said. “But what do I know?”

Wallander motioned for him to continue.

“There are about two cases per year in which an employer suspects an employee of embezzling,” Svedberg said. “We’ve also come across a number of surveillance assignments that are rather vague in nature. In general, quite a tedious picture. His notes aren’t particularly extensive. But he was well paid.”

“So now we know how he could take those expensive holidays,” Wallander said. “It cost him 30,000 kronor for the trip to Nairobi.”

“He was working on a case when he died,” Hoglund said.

She opened a diary on the desk. Wallander thought about those reading glasses. He didn’t bother to look at it.

“It seems to have been his usual sort of assignment. Someone referred to only as ‘Mrs Svensson’ suspects her husband of being unfaithful.”

“Here in Ystad?” Wallander asked. “Did he work in other areas too?”

“In 1987 he had a case in Markaryd,” Svedberg said. “There’s nothing further north than that. Since then only cases in Skane. In 1991 he went to Denmark twice and once to Kiel. I haven’t had time to look into the details, but it had something to do with an engineer on a ferry who was having an affair with a waitress who worked on the ferry too. His wife, in Skanor, had suspected him correctly.”

“But otherwise he only took cases in the Ystad area?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Svedberg replied. “Southern and eastern Skane is probably closer to the truth.”

“Holger Eriksson?” Wallander asked. “Have you come across his name?”

Hoglund looked at Svedberg, who shook his head.

“Harald Berggren?”

“Not him either.”

“Have you found anything that might indicate a connection between Eriksson and Runfeldt?”

Again the answer was negative. It has to be there, thought Wallander. It doesn’t make sense that there would be two different killers. Just as it doesn’t make sense that there would be two random victims. The connection is there. We just haven’t found it yet.

“I can’t work him out,” Hoglund said. “He had a passion for flowers, but he spent his spare time working as a private detective.”

“People are seldom what you think they are,” Wallander replied, wondering suddenly whether this could be said of him.

“He seems to have made a bundle from this work,” Svedberg said. “But if I’m not mistaken, he didn’t report any of the income when he filed his tax returns. Could the explanation be that simple? He kept it secret so the tax authorities wouldn’t find out what he was up to?”

“Hardly,” Wallander said. “In the eyes of most people, being a private detective is a rather shady occupation.”

“Or childish,” Hoglund said. “A game for men who have never grown up.”

Wallander felt a vague urge to protest. But since he didn’t know what to say, he let it drop.

Images of a man in his 50s, with thin, closely cropped hair appeared in the developing tray. The photographs had been taken out of doors. None of them could identify the background. Nyberg guessed that the pictures had been taken from a great distance, since some of the negatives were blurry, suggesting that Runfeldt had used a telephoto lens sensitive to the slightest movement.

“Mrs Svensson contacted him for the first time on 9 September,” Hoglund said. “Runfeldt noted that he had ‘worked on the case’ on 14 and 17 September.”

“That’s only a few days before he was due to leave for Nairobi,” Wallander said.

They had come out of the darkroom. Nyberg was sitting at the desk, going through a number of files with photographs in them.

“Who is his client?” Wallander asked. “Mrs Svensson?”

“His client records and notes are vague,” Svedberg said. “He seems to have been a detective of few words. There isn’t even an address for Mrs Svensson.”

“How does a private detective find clients?” Hoglund asked. “He must advertise his services somehow.”

“I’ve seen ads in the papers,” Wallander said. “Maybe not in Ystad’s Allehanda, but in national newspapers. It must be possible to track down this Mrs Svensson somehow.”

“I talked to the porter,” Svedberg said. “He thought Runfeldt just had a storeroom here. He didn’t see anyone come to visit.”

“So he must have met his clients somewhere else,” Wallander said. “This was the secret room in his life.”

They mulled this over. Wallander tried to decide what was most important right now, but the press conference was troubling him. The man from the Anmarkaren had upset him. Could it really be true that a national citizen militia was being formed? If it was, then Wallander knew it wouldn’t be long before these people began seeking vengeance. He felt a need to tell Hoglund and Svedberg what had happened, but he stopped himself. It was probably better if they discussed it together at the next team meeting. And Chief Holgersson was really the one who should tell them.

“How can we find Mrs Svensson?” Svedberg asked.

“We’ll put a tap on the phone and go through all the papers thoroughly,” Wallander said. “We’ll find her somewhere. I’m sure of that. I might leave it to you two, while I go and have a talk with Runfeldt’s son.”

The town seemed deserted. He parked near the post office, and stepped out into the wind again. He saw himself as a pathetic figure, a police officer in a thin jumper, battling the wind in a desolate Swedish town in the autumn. The Swedish criminal justice system, he thought. Or what’s left of it. This is how it looks. Freezing officers in flimsy jumpers.

He turned left at the Savings Bank and walked to the Hotel Sekelgarden. He checked the son’s name — Bo Runfeldt. Wallander nodded to the young man at the reception desk, and realised that he was the oldest son of Bjork their former police chief.

“It’s been a long time,” Wallander said. “How’s your father?”

“He’s unhappy in Malmo.”

He’s not unhappy in Malmo, Wallander thought. He’s unhappy with his new job.

“What are you reading?” asked Wallander.

“About fractals.”

“Fractals?”

“It’s a mathematical term. I’m at Lund University. This is just a part-time job.”

“That sounds good,” Wallander said. “I’m here to talk to one of your guests, Bo Runfeldt.”

“He just came in.”

“Is there somewhere that we can sit and talk in private?”

“We don’t have many guests,” the boy said. “You can sit in the breakfast room.”

He pointed towards the hall.

“I’ll wait there,” said Wallander. “Please call his room and tell him that I’m here to see him.”

“I read the paper,” the boy said. “Why is it that everything is getting so much worse?”

Wallander looked at him with interest.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Worse. More brutal.”

“I don’t know,” Wallander replied. “I honestly don’t know why things have got so bad. At the same time, I don’t really believe what I just said. I think I do know. I think everybody knows why things are this way.”

Bjork’s son wanted to continue the discussion, but Wallander raised his hand to cut him off and pointed to the phone. Then he went into the breakfast room and sat down. He thought about the unfinished conversation. He knew quite well what the explanation was. The Sweden that was his, the country he had grown up in, that was built after the war, was not as solid as they had thought. Under the surface was quagmire. Even back then the high-rise buildings that had been erected were described as “inhuman”. How could people who lived there be expected to keep their “humanity”? Society had grown cruel. People who felt they were unwanted or unwelcome in their own country, reacted with aggression. There was no such thing as meaningless violence. Every violent act had a meaning for the person who committed it. Only when you dared accept this truth could you hope to turn society in another direction.

He also asked himself how it would be possible to be a police officer as things got worse. Many of his colleagues were seriously considering finding other occupations. Martinsson had talked about it, Hansson had mentioned it once. And a few years ago Wallander had cut out an ad for security personnel at a large company in Trelleborg from the paper. He wondered what Ann-Britt thought. She was still young. She could be a police officer for 30 years or more. He would ask her. He needed to know in order to see how he was going to stand it himself.

At the same time he knew that the picture he was drawing was incomplete. Among young people the interest in police jobs had risen sharply in the past few years, and the increase seemed to be steady.

Back in the early 1990s he had often sat on Rydberg’s balcony on warm, summer evenings and talked of the future. They continued their discussions even during Rydberg’s illness and his last days. They never reached any conclusions, but one thing they did agree on was that police work ultimately had to do with being able to decipher the signs of the times. To understand change and interpret trends in society. And for this reason perhaps the younger generation of police officers were better equipped to deal with modern society.

Now Wallander knew that he had been mistaken about one essential fact. It was no harder being a police officer today than it was in the past. It was harder for him, but that was not the same thing.

Wallander’s thoughts were interrupted when he heard steps in the hall. He stood up and greeted Bo Runfeldt. He was a tall, well-built man of about 27 or 28. He had a strong handshake. Wallander invited him to sit down, realising that as usual he had forgotten to bring his notebook. It was doubtful whether he even had a pen. He considered going out to the front desk to borrow some from Bjork’s son, but decided against it. He would have to rely on his memory. His carelessness was inexcusable, and it annoyed him.

“Let me start by offering my condolences,” Wallander began.

Bo Runfeldt nodded. He didn’t say anything. His eyes were an intense blue, his gaze rather squinting. Wallander wondered if he was short-sighted.

“I know you’ve had a long conversation with my colleague, Inspector Hansson,” Wallander continued. “But I need to ask you a few questions myself.”

Runfeldt remained silent behind his piercing gaze.

“You live in Arvika,” said Wallander. “And you’re an accountant.”

“I work for Price Waterhouse,” said Runfeldt. His voice indicated a person who was used to expressing himself.

“That doesn’t sound Swedish.”

“It’s not. Price Waterhouse is one of the world’s largest accounting firms. It’s easier to list the countries where we don’t do business than where we do.”

“But you work in Sweden?”

“Not all the time. I often have assignments in Africa and Asia.”

“Do they need accountants from Sweden?”

“Not just from Sweden, but from Price Waterhouse. We audit many relief projects. To ensure the money has ended up where it’s supposed to.”

“And does it?”

“Not always. Is this really relevant to what happened to my father?”

Wallander could see that Bo Runfeldt was finding it difficult to hide his feeling that talking to a policeman was beneath his dignity. Under normal circumstances Wallander would have reacted angrily, but something made him hold back. He wondered fleetingly whether it was because he had inherited the submissiveness that his father had so often exhibited in his life, especially towards the men who had come in their shiny American cars to buy his paintings. Maybe that was his inheritance: a feeling of inferiority.

He regarded the man with the blue eyes.

“Your father was murdered,” he said. “Right now I’m the one who decides which questions are relevant.”

Bo Runfeldt shrugged. “I have to admit that I don’t know much about police work.”

“I spoke to your sister earlier,” Wallander continued. “One question I asked her may have great significance, and I’m going to ask you too. Did you know that your father, besides being a florist, worked as a private detective?”

Runfeldt burst out laughing.

“That’s got to be the most idiotic thing I’ve heard in a long time,” he said.

“Idiotic or not, it’s true.”

“A private detective?”

“Private investigator, if you prefer. He had an office. He took on various assignments. He’d been doing it for at least ten years.”

Runfeldt saw that Wallander was serious. His surprise was genuine.

“He must have started his business about the same time that your mother died.”

Wallander noticed an almost imperceptible shift in his features, as though he had encroached on an area that he really should have kept out of. It was the same reaction that the daughter had had.

“You knew that your father was due to go to Nairobi,” he continued. “When one of my colleagues spoke to you, you seemed incredulous that he hadn’t turned up at Kastrup Airport.”

“I talked to him the day before.”

“How did he seem?”

“The same as usual. He talked about his trip.”

“He didn’t seem apprehensive?”

“No.”

“You must have been worried about his disappearance. Can you come up with any explanation for why he would miss his trip? Or mislead you?”

“There’s no reasonable explanation for it.”

“It looks as if he packed his suitcase and left the flat. That’s where the trail ends.”

“Someone must have picked him up.”

Wallander paused before asking the next question.

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did your father have any enemies?”

“None that I know of. Not any more.”

“What do you mean by that? Not any more?”

“Exactly what I said. I don’t think he’s had any enemies for a long time.”

“Could you explain what you mean?”

Runfeldt took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. Wallander noticed that his hand was shaking slightly.

“Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Not at all.”

Wallander waited. He knew there would be more. He also had a feeling that he was closing in on something important.

“I don’t know if my father had any enemies,” he said. “But I do know there’s one person who had reason to hate him.”

“Who?”

“My mother.”

Runfeldt waited for Wallander to ask him a question. But it didn’t come. He kept on waiting.

“My father sincerely loved orchids,” Runfeldt said. “He was a knowledgeable man, a self-taught botanist. But he was also something else.”

“What’s that?”

“He was a brutal man. He abused my mother throughout their marriage. Sometimes so badly that she had to be hospitalised. We tried to get her to leave him, but she wouldn’t. He beat her. Afterwards he would be contrite, and she would give in. It was a nightmare that never seemed to end. The brutality didn’t stop until she drowned.”

“As I understand it, she fell through a hole in the ice?”

“That’s as much as I know, that’s what my father told us.”

“You don’t sound totally convinced.”

Runfeldt stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette in an ashtray.

“Maybe she went out there beforehand and sawed a hole in the ice. Maybe she decided to put an end to it all.”

“Is that a possibility?”

“She talked about committing suicide. Not often; a few times during the last years of her life. But we didn’t believe her. People usually don’t. Suicides are fundamentally inexplicable to those who should have paid attention and understood what was happening.”

Wallander thought about the pungee pit. The partially sawed-through planks. Gosta Runfeldt had been a brutal man. He had abused his wife. He tried to measure the significance of what Bo Runfeldt was telling him.

“I don’t grieve for my father,” Runfeldt continued. “I don’t think my sister does either. He was a cruel man. He tortured the life out of our mother.”

“He was never cruel towards the two of you?”

“Never. Only towards her.”

“Why did he mistreat her?”

“I don’t know. One shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but he was a monster.”

Wallander thought for a moment.

“Has it ever crossed your mind that your father might have killed your mother? That it wasn’t an accident?”

“Many times. But there is no way to prove it. There were no witnesses. They were alone on the ice on that winter day.”

“What’s the name of the lake?”

“Stang Lake. It’s not far from Almhult. In southern Smaland.”

Wallander thought for a moment. Did he really have any other questions? It felt as if the investigation had taken a stranglehold on itself. There ought to be plenty of questions. And there were. But there was no-one to ask.

“Does the name Harald Berggren mean anything to you?”

Runfeldt gave it careful thought before he answered.

“No. Nothing. But I could be mistaken. It’s a common name.”

“Has your father ever had contact with mercenaries?”

“Not as far as I know. But I remember that he often talked about the Foreign Legion when I was a child. Never to my sister, only to me.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Adventure stories. Maybe joining the Foreign Legion was some kind of teenage dream he’d had. But I’m pretty sure that he never had anything to do with them. Or with mercenaries.”

“Holger Eriksson? Have you ever heard that name?”

“The man who was murdered the week before my father? I saw it in the newspapers. As far as I know, my father never had anything to do with him. I could be wrong, of course. We didn’t keep in close contact.”

“How long are you staying in Ystad?”

“The funeral will be as soon as we can make the necessary arrangements. We have to decide what to do with the shop.”

“It’s very possible that you’ll hear from me again,” Wallander said, getting to his feet.

He left the hotel. He was hungry. The wind tugged and pulled at his clothes. He stood in the shelter of a building and tried to decide what to do. He should eat, he knew that, but he also knew that he had to sit down soon and try to collect his thoughts. He was still looking for the point where the lives of Eriksson and Runfeldt intersected. It’s there somewhere, in the dim background, he told himself. Maybe I’ve even seen it already, or walked past it without seeing.

He got his car and drove over to the station. On the way he called Hoglund on her mobile phone. She told him that they were still going through the office, but they had sent Nyberg home because his foot was hurting badly.

“I’m on my way to the station. I’ve just had an interesting conversation with Runfeldt’s son,” Wallander said. “I need some time to go over it.”

“It’s not enough for us to shuffle our papers,” Hoglund replied. “We also need someone to do the thinking.”

He wasn’t sure if she meant this last remark to be sarcastic, but he pushed the thought aside.

Hansson was sitting in his office going through the reports that were starting to pile up. Wallander stood in the door. He had a coffee cup in his hand.

“Where are the pathologists’ reports?” he asked. “They must have come in by now. At least the one on Holger Eriksson.”

“It’s probably in Martinsson’s office. I seem to recall he mentioned something about it.”

“Is he still here?”

“He went home. He copied a file to a disk and was going to keep working on it at home.”

“Is that really allowed?” Wallander wondered absentmindedly. “Taking investigative material home?”

“I don’t know,” Hansson replied. “For me, it’s never come up. I don’t even have a computer at home. But maybe that’s a breach of regulations these days.”

“What’s a breach of regulations?”

“Not having a computer at home.”

“In that case, we’re both guilty,” Wallander said. “I’d like to see those reports early tomorrow morning.”

“How did it go with Bo Runfeldt?”

“I have to write up my notes tonight, but he said some things that may prove important. And now we know for sure that Gosta Runfeldt spent some of his time working as a private detective.”

“Svedberg called in. He told me.”

Wallander took his mobile phone out of his pocket.

“What did we do before we had these things?” he asked. “I can hardly remember.”

“We did exactly the same thing,” Hansson replied. “But it took longer. We searched for phone boxes. We spent a lot more time in our cars. But we did exactly the same things that we do now.”

Wallander walked down the hall to his office, nodding to a few officers as they came out of the canteen. He went into his office and sat down. More than ten minutes passed before he pulled over an unused notebook.

It took him two hours to put together a thorough summary of the two murders. He had been trying to steer two vessels at the same time, while looking for the point of contact that he knew had to exist. After 11 p.m. he threw down his pen and leaned back in his chair. He had reached a point where he could see nothing more. But he was positive. The contact was there. They just hadn’t found it yet.

There was something else. Time after time he came back to Hoglund’s observation. There’s something blatant about the modus operandi. Both in terms of Eriksson’s death, impaled on sharpened bamboo stakes, and Runfeldt, who was strangled and left tied to a tree. I see something, he thought, I just haven’t managed to see through it. It was almost midnight when he turned off the light in his office. He stood there in the dark. It was still just a hunch, a vague fear deep inside his brain.

The killer would strike again. He seemed to have detected a signal as he worked at his desk. There was something incomplete about everything that had happened so far. What it was, he didn’t know.

But still he was sure.