An Event in Autumn: A Kurt Wallander Mystery

Chapter 13

Stina Hurlén and her colleagues in Lund had done a good job. They still needed more time to investigate the woman whose skeleton had been found, but the information they could produce and confirm now was sufficient for Wallander and his colleagues to know what they were up against. In the first place, it really was a murder that had been committed. The woman had been killed. She had all the injuries typical of somebody who had been hanged. The injuries to the bones at the back of her neck were what had killed her. Wallander made the sardonic comment that it was usual for suicides to hang themselves, but not for them to go on to cut themselves down and bury themselves in their own or somebody else’s garden.

They also received confirmation that Hurlén’s guess about the woman being around fifty was in fact correct. That was her age when she died. The skeleton showed no signs of injuries caused by wear and tear: so the woman lying in the grave was not someone who had indulged in hard physical labor.

But it was the last item in the report that made Wallander and his colleagues feel they had received a significant piece of information they could work around — the handle that all police officers look for in a criminal investigation.

The woman had been lying in her grave for between fifty and seventy years. Exactly how the medics and various experts had reached that conclusion was beyond Wallander’s comprehension. But he trusted it. The forensic experts were very rarely wrong.

Wallander took Martinson and Linda with him into his office, where they sat around his desk. Linda was not actually involved in the case, but she was following developments out of curiosity. And Wallander had learned to appreciate her spontaneous comments. Sometimes she came out with something that immediately proved to be important.

“The time,” said Wallander when they had settled down. “What’s the significance of that?”

“So she died at some point between 1930 and 1950,” said Martinson. “That makes things both easier and more difficult. Easier because we now have a limited time to search through. More difficult because it’s so long ago.”

Wallander smiled. “That was neatly put,” he said. “Different. ‘We have a limited time to search through.’ Searching through time. Maybe you ought to become a poet in another existence.”

He leaned forward, suddenly inspired by a burst of energy. Now they had something to hold onto. The handle was in place.

“We’ll have to start rummaging around,” he said. “We’ll have to work our way through piles of dusty papers. Whatever happened took place when we’d barely been born — least of all Linda. But I’m beginning to be very interested in who that woman was, and what exactly happened.”

“I’ve just been doing some mental arithmetic,” said Linda. “If we assume she was murdered in 1940, just to pick a point in time between the two limits mentioned, and if we take it that the murderer was an adult — let’s say about thirty or so — that means we’re looking for somebody who’s about ninety years old. A ninety-year-old murderer. And he could even be over a hundred. Which presumably means he’s been dead for ages.”

“Correct,” said Wallander. “But we don’t call it a day simply because a murderer is presumably dead. What we start by doing is finding out who this woman was. Then we might hear from relatives, perhaps even children, who will be relieved if they find out what happened.”

“In other words, we become sort of archaeological police officers,” said Martinson. “It’ll be interesting to hear what degree of priority Lisa gives it.”

The answer to that, as Wallander had expected, was none at all. Lisa Holgersson recognized, of course, that the discovery of the skeleton needed to be investigated, but she couldn’t grant them any extra resources since there were so many other cases that were waiting urgently to be concluded.

“I have the National Police Board breathing down my neck, with all the boxes we have to tick and paperwork to send them,” she sighed. “We have to demonstrate that we’re being successful with our inquiries. We can no longer get away with reporting shelved investigations as solved.”

Both Martinson and Wallander gave a start. Wallander suspected that Lisa Holgersson might have said too much. Or maybe she just wanted to share her frustration.

“Is that really possible?” asked Wallander cautiously.

“Everything is possible. I’m just waiting for the day when the National Audit Office discovers that we’ve been recording shelved investigations as solved.”

“We’ll be the ones who suffer,” said Wallander. “We’ll be the ones the general public blame.”

“No,” said Martinson. “People aren’t that stupid. They see that there are fewer and fewer of us. They recognize that it’s not us who are the problem.”

Lisa Holgersson stood up. The meeting was closed. She had no desire to continue an unpleasant conversation about any sleight of hand concerning unsolved — and yet solved — criminal cases.

Martinson and Wallander headed toward one of the conference rooms. They bumped into Linda in the corridor. She was on her way out to one of the patrol cars.

“How did it go?”

“As expected,” said Wallander. “We have too much to do, and so we should do as little as we can.”

“That was an unjust comment,” said Martinson.

“Of course it was unjust. Who said that police work had anything to do with justice?”

Linda shook her head and left.

“I didn’t understand that last comment you made,” said Martinson.

“Neither did I,” said Wallander cheerfully. “But it does no harm to give the younger generation something to think about.”

They sat down at the table. Martinson contacted Stefan Lindman on the intercom; he arrived after a few minutes, carrying a file.

“Missing persons,” said Wallander. “Nothing fascinates the public at large like people who go up in smoke. People who go out to buy a bottle of milk and never come back. Or visit a girlfriend and are never seen again. Young women who go missing never fail to stimulate the general public’s imagination. I still remember a girl called Ulla who disappeared after a dance in Sundbyberg sometime in the fifties. She was never seen again. I can still conjure up her face whenever I think about her.”

“There are some statistics,” said Stefan Lindman. “They’re pretty reliable, given that they come from the police... Most people reported as missing usually turn up again very soon — after just a couple of days, or maybe a week. Only a few never return.”

He opened the file.

“I’ve dug down into the past,” he said. “In order to cover the time the medics think we should be looking at, I’ve fished out information relevant to the period 1935 to 1955. Our registers — even the old ones and those dealing with unsolved investigations at various points in time — are pretty detailed. I think I’ve produced quite a good picture of the overall situation, and the missing women who might be of interest.”

Wallander leaned forward over the table.

“So what have you to tell us?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

Stefan Lindman nodded.

“Your ears are not deceiving you. During the period of time in question there wasn’t a single woman in the appropriate age range who was reported as missing in this area. Nor was there anybody in Malmö. I thought I’d found a woman who might be the one we were after — a forty-nine-year-old from Svedala who went missing in December 1942. But she turned up again a few years later. She had left her husband and gone off with a soldier from Stockholm who had been stationed here. But she grew tired of him, the passion cooled down, and she came back home. There’s nothing at all apart from her.”

They thought over what Stefan Lindman had said, in silence.

“So nobody is reported missing,” said Martinson after a while. “But a woman was buried in a garden. She had been murdered. Somebody must have missed her.”

“She could have come from somewhere else,” said Lindman. “A list of all the women of the appropriate age in Sweden who have gone missing during those years would produce a quite different result, naturally. Besides, there was a war on, and a lot of people were constantly on the move. Including refugees, who were not always registered officially, as they ought to have been.”

Wallander followed a different line of thought.

“This is how I see it,” he said. “We don’t know who the woman is — but we do know where she was buried. Somebody picked up a spade and buried her. There’s no reason to believe that was anybody but the man who killed her. Or the woman — that’s not impossible of course. That ought to be our starting point. Who held the spade? Why was the body buried in Karl Eriksson’s garden?”

“Not Karl Eriksson’s garden,” said Martinson. “Ludvig Hansson’s garden.”

Wallander nodded.

“That’s where we must start,” he said. “With Ludwig Hansson and his family who owned the place in those days. All those who were alive then are now dead. Apart from those who were children at the time. That’s where we should begin: with Ludvig Hansson’s children.”

“Shall I carry on searching?” wondered Lindman. “With the rest of Sweden? All missing women between 1935 and 1955?”

“Yes,” said Wallander. “That woman must have been reported missing somewhere or other. She must be there somewhere.”