The Fifth Woman

CHAPTER 31

Walland stayed in Lund for the rest of the day. With every hour that passed he grew more certain that they would find who had murdered the three men through Katarina Taxell. They were looking for a woman who was beyond all doubt deeply involved in some way. But they didn’t know whether she was acting alone, or what her motive was.

The talk with Katarina Taxell’s mother had got them nowhere. She started rushing hysterically around the flat, looking for her missing daughter and grandchild. Finally she became so agitated that they had to get a doctor to see her. Wallander was convinced by then that she didn’t know where her daughter had gone. The few women friends she had who her mother thought might have come to get her were contacted at once. Each seemed puzzled. But Wallander didn’t trust what he heard over the phone. At his request, Birch followed closely in his tracks and called on each person Wallander had spoken to.

Wallander went downstairs and across the street to the petrol station. He had asked the attendant, Jonas Hader, to repeat his account of what he had seen. It was like meeting the perfect witness. Hader seemed to look at the world around him as if his observations might at any time be transformed into crucial testimony.

The red Golf had stopped outside the building at the same time as a lorry carrying newspapers had left the petrol station. They got hold of the driver, who was positive that he had left the petrol station at 9.30 a.m. sharp. Hader had noticed lots of details, including a big sticker on the rear window of the car, but it was too far away for him to see what it was. He insisted that the car had roared off, that it was driven in what he considered a masculine way. The only thing he hadn’t seen was the driver. It was raining, and the windscreen wipers were going. He couldn’t have seen anything even if he’d tried. On the other hand, he was convinced that Taxell was wearing a light green coat, that she’d had a big sports bag, and that the child was wrapped in a blue blanket. She came out the door just as the car drew up. The back door was opened from the inside and she put the child in and then put her bag in the boot. Then she opened the back door on the other side and climbed into the car. The driver gunned the engine before Taxell had even closed her door. Hader couldn’t catch the licence-plate number, although Wallander had a feeling that he had tried. He had never seen a car stop at the back door before.

Wallander returned to the building with a feeling that he’d had something confirmed, although he wasn’t sure what it was. It seemed to have been a hurried escape, but how long had it been planned? And why?

In the meantime Birch had talked to the officers who had taken turns keeping the building under surveillance. Wallander specifically asked them to say whether they had seen a woman near the building who had come and gone, or showed up more than once. But unlike Jonas Hader, the officers had made few observations. They had concentrated on the front door. Wallander insisted that they identify every person they noticed. Since 14 families lived in the building, the whole afternoon had been filled with policemen checking up on the residents.

This was how Birch found someone who might have seen something important. It was a man who lived two floors above Katarina Taxell. He was a retired musician, and according to Birch he described his life as “standing for hours at the window, staring out at the rain, and hearing in my mind music I will never play again”. That morning he’d seen a woman on the other side of the square. A woman on foot, who had suddenly stopped, took several steps back, and then stood motionless and studied the building, before turning around and disappearing. When Birch brought this news, Wallander immediately thought that this could be the woman they were looking for. Someone had come, and noticed the car parked right outside the door. Someone had come to visit Katarina Taxell. In the same way that she’d had a visitor in the hospital.

Wallander became energetic and determined. He asked Birch to contact Taxell’s friends again and ask if any of them had been on their way to visit her that morning. The answer was unequivocal. No-one had. Birch had tried to coax a description of the woman out of the musician, but the only thing that he could say with certainty was that it was a woman. It had been around 8 a.m. This wasn’t confirmed, though, because the three clocks in his flat all showed different times.

Wallander’s energy on that day was inexhaustible. He sent Birch out on various tasks. Birch didn’t seem at all put out that Wallander was giving him orders as if to a subordinate. Meanwhile Wallander began a methodical search of Taxell’s flat. The first thing he asked Birch was whether he could have his forensic technicians secure fingerprints.

He kept in constant contact with Ystad. On four separate occasions he talked to Nyberg. Ylva Brink had smelled the name tag holder, which still had a faint trace of perfume. It might have been the same scent she noticed on that night in the maternity ward, but she wasn’t positive.

Twice during the day he talked to Martinsson at home. Terese was still scared and depressed, of course, and Martinsson was determined to quit the force. But Wallander managed to get him to promise to wait at least until the next day before he wrote his letter of resignation. Wallander gave him a detailed account of what had happened. He was sure that Martinsson was listening, although he made few comments. But Wallander knew that he had to keep Martinsson involved with the investigation. He didn’t want to risk having him make a decision he would later regret. He talked to Chief Holgersson several times. Hansson and Hoglund had taken firm action at the school where Terese was attacked. They interviewed the three boys who were involved, one after the other. They had been in contact with the parents and the teachers. According to Hoglund, Hansson had done an excellent job when all the students had been assembled and told about what happened. The students were upset, and she didn’t think it would happen again.

Eskil Bengtsson and the other men had been released, but Akeson was going to prosecute. Maybe what had happened to Martinsson’s daughter would make some people reconsider, Hoglund said, but Wallander had his doubts. They would have to use a great deal of energy in the future to combat the private militias.

The most important news of the day came from Hamren, who had taken over some of Hansson’s assignments. He had managed to locate Gote Tandvall, and called Wallander at once.

“He has an antique shop in Simrishamn,” Hamren said. “He also travels around and buys antiques, which he exports to Norway and other places.”

“Is that legal?”

“I don’t think it is strictly illegal,” Hamren replied. “The prices are probably higher there. Then of course it depends on what kind of antiques they are.”

“I want you to pay him a visit,” Wallander said. “Go to Simrishamn. The thing we need to know is whether a relationship really existed between Holger Eriksson and Krista Haberman. And Tandvall might have other information for us.”

Hamren called back three hours later. He was in his car outside Simrishamn. He had met Tandvall. Wallander waited tensely.

“Tandvall is an extremely precise individual,” Hamren said. “He seems to have a complicated sort of memory. Some things he couldn’t remember at all, but on other matters he was crystal clear.”

“Krista Haberman?”

“He remembered her. I got a feeling that she must have been rather beautiful. He was positive that Eriksson had met her on a couple of occasions. He remembered them watching returning geese one morning on the pier at Falsterbo. Or maybe it was cranes. On that point he was unclear.”

“Is he a bird-watcher too?”

“He was dragged along by his father.”

“So now we know the most important thing,” Wallander said.

“It does look as if it all fits. Krista Haberman, Holger Eriksson.”

Wallander felt a sudden wave of disgust. It came to him with horrifying clarity what he was now starting to believe.

“I want you to return to Ystad,” he said. “Go through all the material on Haberman’s actual disappearance. When and where was she last seen? I want you to put together a summary of that part of the investigation.”

“It sounds as though you have something in mind,” Hamren said.

“She disappeared,” Wallander said. “She was never found. What does that indicate?”

“That she’s dead.”

“More than that. Don’t forget that we’re skirting the edges of an investigation in which both men and women are subjected to the most brutal violence imaginable.”

“Do you believe that she was murdered?”

“Hansson gave me a summary of the investigation. The possibility of murder has been there from the start, but since there was nothing to suggest that this had happened, it wasn’t allowed to outweigh other possible explanations for her disappearance. That’s correct police procedure. No hasty conclusions.”

“You think that Eriksson killed her?”

Wallander could hear that this idea was occurring to Hamren for the first time.

“I am not certain of it,” said Wallander. “But it’s a possibility that we can’t ignore.”

Wallander left Katarina Taxell’s flat. He had to have something to eat. He found a pizzeria close by. He ate too fast and immediately got a stomach ache.

Since there was nothing to indicate that the series of killings was over, they were working against time. And they didn’t know how much time they had. He reminded himself that Martinsson had promised to put together a timetable of everything that had happened so far. He was supposed to have done that on the day that Terese was attacked. On his way back to Taxell’s flat, Wallander decided it couldn’t wait. He stopped in a bus shelter and called Ystad. He was in luck. Hoglund was there. She had already talked to Hamren and knew that they had positive confirmation that Krista Haberman and Holger Eriksson had met. Wallander asked her to make the timetable of events.

“I have no idea whether it’s important,” he said. “But we know too little about how this woman moves around. Maybe the geographical centre will become clear if we make a timetable.”

“Now you’re saying ‘she’,” Hoglund said.

“Yes, I am. But we don’t know if she’s alone. We also don’t know what role she plays.”

“What do you think has happened to Katarina Taxell?”

“She’s run away, in a hurry, when she discovered that the building was being watched. She’s run away because she has something to hide.”

“Is it possible that she killed Blomberg?”

“Taxell is a link in the chain. She doesn’t represent a beginning or an end. I can’t imagine her killing anyone. She presumably belongs to the group of women who have been victims of abuse.”

“Was she abused too? I didn’t know that.” Hoglund sounded genuinely surprised.

“She might not have been beaten up or cut with a knife,” Wallander said. “But I suspect that she’s been victimised in some other way.”

“Psychologically?”

“Something like that.”

“By Blomberg?”

“Yes.”

“But she still had his child? If what you think about the father is true.”

“I described to you the way she held her baby. But of course there are still a lot of holes,” Wallander admitted. “Police work is a question of piecing together tentative solutions. We have to make the gaps speak and the pieces tell us about things that have hidden meanings. We have to try to see through the events, turn them on their heads in order to set them on their feet.”

“Nobody at the police academy ever talked about this. Weren’t you invited to give a lecture there?”

“Never,” Wallander said. “I can’t give lectures.”

“That’s exactly what you can do,” she replied. “You just refuse to admit it. And besides, I think you’d actually enjoy doing it.”

“That’s neither here nor there,” Wallander said.

Afterwards he thought about what she had said. Did he really want to speak to trainee police officers? In the past he was convinced that his reluctance was genuine. Now he wasn’t so sure.

He left the bus shelter and hurried on through the rain. It was starting to get windy. Back at Taxell’s flat, he continued to search methodically. In a box in the back of a cupboard he found a large number of diaries. She had started the first one when she was twelve. Wallander noticed with surprise that it had a beautiful orchid on the cover. She had kept on writing the diaries through her teenage years and into adulthood. The last diary he found was from 1993. But there were no entries after September. He kept searching, without finding another. But he was certain that it existed. He enlisted the help of Birch, who had finished interviewing the other residents in the building.

Birch found the keys to Taxell’s basement storage room. It took him an hour to go through it. There weren’t any diaries there either. Wallander was convinced that she had taken it with her. They were in the bag that Hader had seen her put in the boot of the car.

Finally only her desk was left. He had quickly gone through the drawers earlier, now he would do it more thoroughly. He sat down on an old chair with the heads of dragons carved into the armrests. The desk was a small secretary in which the top folded down to make a desk surface. On top of the desk there were framed photographs of Katarina Taxell as a child. Katarina sitting on a lawn, with white garden furniture and blurry figures in the background. Katarina sitting next to a big dog, looking straight at the camera with a bow in her hair. Katarina with her mother and her father, the engineer at the sugar refinery. He had a moustache, and seemed to exude self-confidence. Katarina looked more like her father than her mother. Wallander took down the photograph and looked on the back. There was no date. The picture had been taken in a studio in Lund. There was a graduation photograph of Katarina with her white cap, flowers around her neck. She was thin, and had grown pale. Now Katarina was living in a different world. The last picture was an old photograph, the contours faded. It was of a barren landscape by the sea. An old couple gazed stiffly at the camera. In the distance was a three-master, anchored, sails furled. Wallander thought the picture could be from Oland, taken sometime at the end of the last century. Perhaps the couple were Katarina’s great-grandparents. There was nothing written on the back of that one either. He put the photographs back. There was no sign of Blomberg. That might be understandable, but no other man either. Did that mean anything? Everything means something, he thought. The question was what.

One by one he pulled out the small drawers. Letters, documents, bills. Old report cards. Her highest marks were in geography, she had done poorly in physics and maths. In the next drawer he found pictures taken in a photographic booth. Three girls, crowded together, making faces. Another picture, this time of the pedestrian street in Copenhagen. The same three girls were sitting on a bench, laughing. Katarina was on the far right. There was another drawer full of letters, some from as far back as 1972. A stamp with a picture of the man-of-war Wasa. If the secretary contains Taxell’s innermost secrets, thought Wallander, then she doesn’t have many. An impersonal life. No passions, no summer adventures on Greek islands, but high marks in geography. He continued going through the drawers, but nothing caught his attention. He moved on to the three larger drawers below. Still no diaries. Wallander didn’t feel like digging through layer after layer of impersonal mementos. He couldn’t see the woman behind them. Had she even been able to see herself?

He pushed back the chair and closed the last drawer. Nothing. He didn’t know much more than he had before. He frowned. Something didn’t add up. If her decision to leave was sudden, and he was convinced that it had been, then she wouldn’t have had time to take along everything that might give away her secrets. She had the diaries within easy reach. But there is almost always a messy side to a person’s life. Here there was nothing. He stood up and cautiously moved the desk away from the wall. Nothing was fastened to the back. He sat down in the chair again, thinking hard. There was something he had noticed. Something that only now came back to him. He tried to coax the image out. Not the photographs. Not the letters either. What was it then? The report cards? The rental contract? The bills from her credit card company? None of those. What was left?

There’s nothing else but the furniture, he thought. Then it came to him. It was something about the small drawers. He pulled one of them out again, then the next, and compared them. Then he took them all the way out and looked inside. There was nothing there either. He put the drawers back in and pulled out the one on the top left, and then the second. That’s when he discovered it. The drawers were not equally deep. He pulled out the smaller one and turned it around. There was another opening. It was a double drawer. It had a secret compartment in the back. There was only one thing inside. He took it out and put it on the desk.

It was a timetable for Swedish Railways, from the spring of 1991. The trains between Malmo and Stockholm. He took out the other drawers, one by one. He found another secret compartment. It was empty. He leaned back in his chair and thought about the timetable. Why was it important? It was even harder to understand why it had been put into a secret compartment. But it couldn’t have ended up there by mistake.

Birch came into the room.

“Take a look at this,” Wallander said, pointing at the timetable. “This was in Katarina Taxell’s secret hiding place.”

“A timetable?”

Wallander nodded. “I don’t get it,” he said.

He leafed through it, page by page. Birch had pulled up a chair and sat down next to him. Wallander turned the pages. Nothing was written on it, no page had been pressed down and fell open by itself. It was only when he came to the next to last page that he stopped. Birch saw it too. A departure time from Nassjo was underlined. Nassjo to Malmo. Departure at 16.00. Arrival in Lund at 18.42, Malmo at 18.57. Nassjo 16.00. Someone had underlined the whole row.

Wallander looked at Birch. “Does that tell you anything?”

“Not a thing.”

Wallander put down the timetable.

“Does Katarina Taxell have something to do with Nassjo?” Birch asked.

“Not as far as I know,” Wallander said. “But it’s possible that she does. Our biggest problem right now is that everything seems to be possible. We can’t tell what is important and what isn’t.”

Wallander had acquired several plastic bags from the forensic technicians who had gone through the flat earlier in the day, searching for fingerprints that didn’t belong to Katarina Taxell or her mother. He put the timetable in one of them.

“I’m taking this along,” he said, “if you have no objections.”

Birch shrugged.

“You can’t even use it to tell when the trains go,” he said. “It expired three years ago.”

“I rarely take the train,” Wallander said.

“It can be relaxing,” Birch said. “I prefer taking the train to flying. You get time to yourself.”

Wallander thought about his most recent train trip, from Almhult. Birch was right. During the journey he had managed to fall asleep for a while.

“I think it’s time for me to go back to Ystad.”

“We’re not going to put out an APB for Katarina Taxell and her baby?”

“Not yet.”

They left the flat. Birch locked up. The wind was coming in gusts, and it was cold. They said goodbye at Wallander’s car.

“What should we do about her surveillance?” Birch asked.

Wallander thought for a moment.

“Keep it up for the time being,” he said. “Only don’t forget the back this time.”

“What do you think might happen?”

“I don’t know. But someone who has run away might decide to return.”

He drove out of the city. Autumn pressed in all around the car. He switched on the heater, but he was still cold.

What are we going to do now? he asked himself. Katarina Taxell is missing. After a long day in Lund I’m going back to Ystad with an old Swedish Railways timetable in a plastic bag.

But he knew that they had taken an important step forward that day. Eriksson did know Krista Haberman. They knew that there was a connection between the three men who had been murdered. Involuntarily he accelerated. He wanted to find out what Hamren had discovered. When he reached the exit for Sturup Airport he called Ystad. He got hold of Svedberg. The first thing he asked about was Terese.

“She’s getting a lot of support from the school,” Svedberg said. “Especially from the other students. But it’s going to take time.”

“And Martinsson?”

“He’s depressed. He’s talking about quitting.”

“I know.”

“You’re the only one who can talk him out of it.”

“I will.”

He asked if anything important had happened. Svedberg had just arrived at the station himself after sitting in on a meeting with Akeson about obtaining the investigative material on the drowning of Runfeldt’s wife in Almhult.

Wallander asked him to call a meeting of the investigative team for 10 p.m.

“Have you seen Hamren?” was his last question.

“He’s sitting with Hansson going over the material on Krista Haberman. That was apparently something you said was urgent.”

“If they could finish by 10 p.m., I’d be grateful.”

“Are they supposed to find Krista Haberman by then?” Svedberg asked.

“Not exactly. But not far from it, either.”

Wallander put the phone down on the seat next to him. He thought about Katarina Taxell’s secret drawer, which contained an old timetable. He didn’t understand it. Not at all.

At 10 p.m. they were all assembled. Only Martinsson was missing. They began by talking about what had happened that morning. Everyone knew by then that Martinsson had decided to resign from the force.

“I’ll talk to him,” Wallander said. “I’ll find out if he’s really made up his mind. If he has, then of course no-one is going to stop him.”

Wallander gave a brief summary of what had happened in Lund. They considered various explanations as to why Taxell had run away. They also asked themselves if it might be possible to track down the red car. How many red Golfs were there in Skane?

“A woman with a newborn baby can’t disappear without a trace,” Wallander said at last. “It’d be best for us to be patient.”

He looked at Hansson and Hamren.

“The disappearance of Krista Haberman,” he said.

Hansson nodded to Hamren.

“You wanted to know the details surrounding the disappearance itself,” he said. “The last time she was seen was in Svenstavik on Tuesday, 22 October 1967. She went for a walk through town. It wasn’t unusual for her to be out walking. A lumberjack coming from the station on his bike saw her. It was about 5 p.m. and it was already dark. There are several witnesses who said they’d seen a strange car in town that evening. That’s all.”

They sat in silence.

“Did anyone mention the make of the car?” Wallander asked at last.

Hamren searched through the papers. He shook his head and left the room. When he came back he had another stack of papers in his hand. Finally he found what he was looking for.

“One of the witnesses claimed it was a dark blue Chevrolet. He was positive about it. There was a taxi in Svenstavik that was the same make only it was light blue.”

Wallander nodded. “Svenstavik and Lodinge are a long way from each other,” he said softly. “But I seem to remember that Holger Eriksson was selling Chevrolets back then. Is it possible that Eriksson made the long drive to Svenstavik, and that Krista Haberman went back with him?”

He turned to Svedberg.

“Did Eriksson own his farm then?”

Svedberg nodded.

Wallander looked around the room.

“Eriksson was impaled in a pungee pit,” he said. “If the murderer takes the lives of his or her victims in a way that mirrors crimes that were committed earlier, then I think we can imagine our way to a very unpleasant conclusion.”

He wished he was mistaken, but he doubted that he was.

“I think we have to start searching Eriksson’s fields,” he said. “Krista Haberman might be buried there somewhere.”