The Fifth Woman

by Unknown

  “I’m not so sure,” Martinsson said.

  “Why?”

  “It seems that the owner, Gösta Runfeldt, never left for Nairobi.”

  Wallander didn’t understand what Martinsson was saying.

  “His assistant called the travel agency to find out the exact arrival time of his flight. That’s when she found out.”

  “Found out what?”

  “That Runfeldt never flew to Africa, even though he had picked up his ticket.”

  Wallander stared him.

  “So another person seems to have disappeared,” said Martinsson.

  Wallander didn’t answer.

  CHAPTER 7

  On the way in to Ystad, after he had decided to visit Vanja Andersson himself, Wallander remembered something someone had said earlier, that there was another similarity between the two cases. Eriksson had reported a break-in a year before, and nothing had been stolen. There had been a break-in at Gösta Runfeldt’s shop in which nothing seemed to have been taken. Wallander drove with a growing sense of dread.

  Eriksson’s murder was enough for them to deal with. They didn’t need another disappearance, especially not one that might have a connection to Eriksson’s. They didn’t need any more ditches with sharpened stakes in them. Wallander was driving much too fast, as if trying to leave behind him the realisation that once again he was plunging into a nightmare. Now and then he stamped hard on the brake, as if to give the car and not himself an order to take it easy and start thinking rationally. What evidence was there that Runfeldt was missing? There might be some reasonable explanation. What had happened to Eriksson was extraordinary, after all, and it certainly wouldn’t happen twice. At least not in Skåne and definitely not in Ystad. There had to be an explanation, and Vanja Andersson would provide it.

  Wallander never succeeded in convincing himself. Before he drove to Västra Vallgatan he stopped at the police station. He found Höglund in the hall and pulled her into the canteen, where some traffic officers were sitting half-asleep over their lunches. They got some coffee and sat down. Wallander told her Martinsson’s news, and her reaction matched his own. It had to be coincidence. But Wallander asked Höglund to find a copy of the burglary report Eriksson had filed the year before. He also wanted her to check if there was any connection between Eriksson and Runfeldt. He knew she had plenty to do, but it was important that this be taken care of immediately. It was a matter of cleaning up before the guests arrived, he said, instantly regretting having used such a clumsy metaphor.

  “We must hurry,” he went on. “The less energy we have to spend on searching for a connection, the better.”

  He was about to get up from the table, but she stopped him with a question.

  “Who could have done it?” she asked.

  Wallander sank back into his chair. He could picture the bloody stakes, an unbearable sight.

  “I can’t imagine,” he said. “It’s so sadistic and macabre that I can’t accept a normal motive – if there is such a thing for taking someone’s life.”

  “There is,” she replied firmly. “Both you and I have felt enough rage to imagine someone dead. For some people, the usual barriers don’t exist, so they kill.”

  “What scares me is that it was so well planned. Whoever did this took his time. He also knew Eriksson’s habits in detail. He probably stalked him.”

  “Maybe that gives us an opening right there,” she said. “Eriksson didn’t seem to have any close friends, but the person who killed him must have had some proximity to him. He sawed through the planks. In any case, he must have come there and he must have left. Somebody might have seen him, or maybe a car that didn’t belong out there. People keep an eye on what happens around them. People in villages are like deer in the forest. They watch us, but we don’t notice them.”

  Wallander nodded distractedly. He wasn’t listening with as much concentration as usual.

  “We’ll have to talk more about this later,” he said. “I’m going to the florist’s shop now.”

  As Wallander left the station, Ebba called out to him that his father had rung.

  “Later,” Wallander said, “not now.”

  “It’s terrible what happened,” Ebba said. Wallander thought she sounded as if she felt personally sorry for some sorrow he had suffered.

  “I bought a car from him once,” she said. “A second-hand Volvo.”

  It took Wallander a moment before he realised that she was talking about Holger Eriksson.

  “Do you drive?” he asked, surprised. “I didn’t even know you had a licence.”

  “I’ve had a flawless record for 39 years,” Ebba replied. “And I still have that Volvo.”

  Wallander recalled occasionally seeing a well-kept black Volvo in the police car park over the years, without ever wondering whose it was.

  “I hope you got a good deal,” he said.

  “Eriksson got a good deal,” she replied firmly. “I paid far too much for that car, but I’ve taken care of it for all this time, and I’m the one who’s come out ahead. It’s a collector’s item now.”

  “I’ve got to go,” Wallander said. “But sometime you’ll have to take me for a ride in it.”

  “Don’t forget to call your father.”

  Wallander stopped in his tracks and thought a moment. Then he decided.

  “You call him, would you? Do me a favour. Call him and explain what I’m involved with. Tell him I’ll call as soon as I can. I presume it wasn’t anything urgent, right?”

  “He wanted to talk about Italy,” she said.

  “We’ll talk about Italy, but right now I can’t. Tell him that.”

  Wallander parked hastily, half up on the narrow footpath outside the florist’s. There were a few customers inside. He gestured to Vanja Andersson that he would wait. Ten minutes later the shop emptied out, and Vanja Andersson printed a note, taped it to the inside of the door, and locked up. They went into the tiny office at the back. The scent of flowers made Wallander queasy. As usual, he had nothing to write on, so he picked up a stack of gift cards and started making notes on the back.

  “Let’s take it from the beginning,” Wallander said. “You called the travel agency. Why did you do that?”

  He could see that she was upset. A copy of the local newspaper, Ystad’s Allehanda, was lying on the table, with a big headline about the murder of Holger Eriksson. At least she doesn’t know why I’m here, Wallander thought. That I’m hoping there won’t be a connection between Eriksson and Gösta Runfeldt.

  “Gösta wrote me a note saying when he would be coming back,” she began. “I couldn’t find it anywhere. So I called the travel agency. They told me he hadn’t shown up at Kastrup Airport.”

  “What’s the name of the travel agency?”

  “Special Tours in Malmö.”

  “Who did you talk to there?”

  “Anita Lagergren.”

  Wallander made a note.

  “When did you call?”

  She told him.

  “And what else did she say?”

  “Gösta never left. He didn’t check in at Kastrup. They called the phone number he’d given them, but nobody answered. The plane had to leave without him.”

  “And they didn’t do anything else after that?”

  “Anita Lagergren said that they sent a letter explaining that Gösta could not expect a refund for any of the travel costs.”

  Wallander could tell she was about to say something else, but she stopped herself.

  “You were thinking of something,” he coaxed.

  “The trip was extremely expensive,” she said. “Anita Lagergren told me the price.”

  “How much was it?”

  “Almost 30,000 kronor. For two weeks.”

  Wallander agreed. The trip really was quite expensive. Never in his life would he consider taking such an expensive trip. He and his father together had spent about a third of that amount for their week in Rome.

  “I don’t get it,” she
said. “Gösta just wouldn’t do anything like this.”

  “How long have you worked for him?”

  “Nearly eleven years.”

  “And things have gone well?”

  “Gösta is a very nice man. He truly loves flowers. Not just orchids.”

  “We’ll come back to that later. How would you describe him?”

  She thought for a moment.

  “Considerate and friendly,” she said. “A little eccentric. A recluse.” Wallander thought uneasily that this description might also fit Holger Eriksson. Although it had been suggested that Eriksson wasn’t a very considerate person.

  “He wasn’t married?”

  “He was a widower.”

  “Did he have children?”

  “Two. Both of them are married and have their own children. Neither of them lives in Skåne.”

  “How old is he?”

  “He is 49.”

  Wallander looked at his notes.

  “A widower,” he said. “So his wife must have been quite young when she died. Was it an accident?”

  “I’m not sure. He never talked about it. But I think she drowned.”

  Wallander dropped the line of questioning. They would go over it all in detail soon enough, if it proved necessary. He put his pen down on the table. The scent of flowers was overwhelming.

  “You must have thought about this,” he said. “You must have wondered about two things in the past few hours. First, why he didn’t get on the plane to Africa. Second, where he is now instead of in Nairobi.”

  She nodded. Wallander saw that she had tears in her eyes.

  “Something must have happened,” she said. “As soon as I talked to the travel agency I went over to his flat. It’s right down the street, and I have a key. I was supposed to water his flowers. After I thought he’d left on his trip I was there twice, and put his post on the table. Now I went back. He wasn’t there, and he hasn’t been there, either.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I can tell.”

  “So what do you think happened?”

  “I have no idea. He was looking forward to this trip so much. He was planning to finish writing his book about orchids this winter.”

  Wallander could feel his own anxiety increasing. A warning bell had started ringing inside him. He recognised the silent alarm. He gathered up the cards he had used for his notes.

  “I’ll have to take a look at his flat,” he said. “And you need to open the shop again. I’m sure all of this has a reasonable explanation.”

  She sought assurance in his eyes that he really meant what he said. But Wallander knew she wouldn’t find it. He took the keys to the flat. It was on the same street, one block closer to the centre of town.

  “I’ll drop the keys off when I’m done,” he said.

  When he came out onto the narrow street, an elderly couple was trying with difficulty to squeeze past his parked car. They gave him an imploring look. But he ignored them and walked away.

  The flat was on the third floor of a building that dated from around the turn of the century. There was a lift, but Wallander took the stairs. Several years ago he had considered exchanging his own flat for one in a building like this. Now he couldn’t imagine what he had been thinking of. If he sold the flat on Mariagatan, it would have to be for a house with a garden. Where Baiba could live. And maybe a dog too.

  He unlocked the door and entered Runfeldt’s flat. He wondered how many times in his life he had walked into a stranger’s home. He stopped just inside the door. Every flat had its own character. Over the years Wallander had perfected his habit of listening for traces of the occupants. He walked slowly through the rooms. Often it was the first impression that he would return to later. Gösta Runfeldt lived here, a man who had failed to show up where he was expected one morning. Wallander thought about what Vanja Andersson had said. About Runfeldt’s eager excitement at his expedition.

  After going through all four rooms and the kitchen, Wallander stopped in the middle of the living room. It was a large, bright flat. He had a vague feeling that it was furnished with some indifference. The only room that had any personality was the study. A comfortable chaos prevailed there. Books, papers, lithographs of flowers, maps. A desk piled with clutter. A computer. A few photographs of children and grandchildren on a windowsill. A photograph of Runfeldt somewhere in an Asian landscape, surrounded by giant orchids. On the back someone had written that it was taken in Burma in 1972. Runfeldt was smiling at the unknown photographer, a friendly smile from a sun-tanned man. The colours had faded, but not Runfeldt’s smile. Wallander put it back and looked at a map of the world hanging on the wall. With a little effort he located Burma. Then he sat down at the desk. Runfeldt was supposed to leave on a trip, but he hadn’t left. At least not for Nairobi on the Special Travels charter flight.

  Wallander got up and went into the bedroom. The bed was made, a narrow, single bed. There was a stack of books next to the bed. Wallander looked at the titles. Books about flowers. The only one that stood out was a book about the international currency market. Wallander bent down and looked under the bed. Nothing. He opened the doors to the wardrobe. On a shelf at the top of the wardrobe lay two suitcases. He stood on tiptoe and lifted them down. Both were empty. Then he went to the kitchen and got a chair. He looked at the top shelf. Now he found what he was looking for. A single man’s flat is seldom completely free of dust. Runfeldt’s was no exception. The outline in the dust was quite clear. A third suitcase had been there. Because the other two he had taken down were old, and one of them even had a broken lock, Wallander imagined that Runfeldt would have used the third suitcase. If he had gone on the trip. If it wasn’t somewhere else in the flat. He hung his jacket over the back of a chair and opened all the cupboards and storage spaces. He found nothing. Then he returned to the study.

  If Runfeldt had left on the trip, he would have had to take his passport with him. Wallander searched through the desk drawers, which weren’t locked. In one of them was an old herbarium. He opened it. Gösta Runfeldt 1955. Even during his school days he had pressed flowers. Wallander looked at a 40-year-old cornflower. The blue colour was still present, or a pale memory of it. He had pressed flowers himself once. He kept on searching. He couldn’t find a passport. He frowned. A suitcase was gone, and the passport too. He hadn’t found the tickets, either. He left the study and sat down in an armchair in the living room. Sometimes changing places helped him to think. There were plenty of signs that Runfeldt had actually left his flat with his passport, tickets, and a packed suitcase.

  He let his mind wander. Could something have happened on the way to Copenhagen? Could he have fallen into the sea from one of the ferries? If that had happened then his suitcase would have been found. He pulled out one of the gift cards he had in his pocket. He had written the phone number of the shop on it. He went to the kitchen to make the call. Through the window he could see the tall grain lift in Ystad harbour. One of the ferries to Poland was on its way out past the stone jetty. Vanja Andersson answered the phone.

  “I’m still at the flat,” he said. “I’ve got a couple of questions. Did he tell you how he was travelling to Copenhagen?”

  Her reply was precise.

  “He always went via Limhamn and Dragør.”

  So now he knew that much.

  “Do you know how many suitcases he owned?”

  “No. How should I know that?”

  Wallander saw that he must ask the question in a different way.

  “What did his suitcase look like?”

  “He didn’t usually take a lot of luggage,” she replied. “He knew how to travel light. He had a shoulder bag and a larger suitcase with wheels.”

  “What colour was it?”

  “It was black.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Yes, I am. I’m sure. I picked him up a few times after his trips. At the train station or at Sturup Airport. Gösta never threw anything away. If he’d had to
buy a new suitcase I would have known about it, because he would have complained about how expensive it was. He could be stingy sometimes.”

  But the trip to Nairobi cost 30,000 kronor, Wallander thought. And that money was just thrown away. I’m sure it wasn’t voluntarily. He told her he’d drop off the keys within half an hour.

  After he hung up he thought about what she had said. A black suitcase. The two he had found in the wardrobe were grey. He hadn’t seen a shoulder bag either. Besides, now he knew that Runfeldt travelled out into the world via Limhamn. He stood by the window and looked over the rooftops. The Poland ferry was gone.

  It doesn’t make sense, he thought. There may have been an accident. But even that wasn’t certain. To follow up on one of the most important questions, he called information and asked for the number of the ferry line between Limhamn and Dragør. He was lucky and got the person who was responsible for lost property on the ferries. The man was Danish. Wallander told him who he was and asked about a black suitcase. He told him the date. Then he waited. It took a few minutes before the Dane, who had introduced himself as Mogensen, came back.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  Wallander tried to think. Then he asked his question.

  “Do people ever disappear from your boats? Fall overboard?”

  “Hardly ever,” Mogensen replied. Wallander thought he sounded convincing.

  “But it does happen?”

  “It happens in all boat traffic,” said Mogensen. “People commit suicide. People get drunk. Some are mad and try to balance on the railing. But it doesn’t happen often.”

  “Are people who fall overboard usually recovered? Either drowned or alive?”

  “Most of them float ashore, dead,” Mogensen answered. “Some get caught in fishing nets. Only a few disappear completely.”

  Wallander had no more questions. He thanked the man for his help and said goodbye.

  He had nothing tangible to go on, and yet now he was convinced that Runfeldt had never gone to Copenhagen. He had packed his bag, taken his passport and ticket, and left his flat. Then he had disappeared.

  Wallander thought about the puddle of blood inside the florist’s shop. What did that mean? Maybe they had it all wrong. It might well be that the break-in was no mistake.