The Fifth Woman

by Unknown

  “But here’s where it gets difficult,” she said. “To believe that a woman can be capable of this. I’m not talking about physical strength. I’m just as strong as my husband, for example. He has trouble beating me at arm wrestling.”

  Wallander looked at her in surprise. She noticed and laughed.

  “People amuse themselves in different ways.”

  Wallander nodded.

  “I remember having a finger-pulling match with my mother when I was little,” he said. “I think I was the winner.”

  “Maybe she let you win.”

  They turned off towards Sturup.

  “I don’t know what motivation this woman has for her actions,” Wallander said. “But if we find her, I think we’ll be dealing with someone the likes of whom we’ve never encountered before.”

  “A female monster?”

  “Maybe. But that’s not certain either.”

  The phone interrupted their conversation. Wallander answered. It was Birch. He gave them directions to Katarina Taxell’s mother’s house.

  “What’s her first name?” Wallander asked.

  “Hedwig. Hedwig Taxell.”

  They would be there in about half an hour. The twilight wrapped around them.

  Birch was on the steps to receive them. Hedwig Taxell lived at the end of a row of terrace houses on the outskirts of Lund. Wallander guessed that the houses had been built in the early 1960s. Flat roofs, square boxes facing onto small courtyards. He recalled having read that the roofs sometimes caved in during heavy snowfalls.

  “They almost started talking before I got the machine set up,” he said.

  “We haven’t exactly been overwhelmed with good luck,” Wallander replied. “What’s your impression of Hedwig Taxell?”

  “She’s worried about her daughter and grandson. But she seems more composed than before.”

  “Do you think she’ll help us? Or is she protecting her daughter?”

  “I think she wants to know where she is.”

  He let them into the living room. Without being able to define it, Wallander had a feeling that the room was somehow similar to Katarina Taxell’s flat. Hedwig Taxell came in and greeted them. As usual, Birch stayed in the background. Wallander studied her. She was pale. Her eyes shifted restlessly. Wallander was expecting this. Her voice on the tape had been nervous and tense, close to breaking point. He had brought Höglund along because she had a great ability to reassure nervous people. Mrs Taxell didn’t seem to be on her guard. He had a feeling that she was glad not to be alone. They sat down. Wallander had prepared his first questions.

  “Mrs Taxell, we need your help. Can you answer some questions about Katarina for us?”

  “How could she know anything about those horrible murders? She just had a baby, you know.”

  “We don’t think she’s in any way involved,” Wallander said in a friendly voice. “But we have to look for information from many different sources.”

  “What’s she supposed to know?”

  “That’s what I’m hoping to find out.”

  “Can’t you try to find her instead? I don’t understand what’s happened.”

  “I’m sure she’s in no danger,” Wallander said, but he wasn’t entirely successful in hiding his doubt.

  “She’s never done a thing like this before.”

  “So you have no idea where she is, Mrs Taxell?”

  “My name is Hedwig.”

  “You have no idea where she is?”

  “No. I can’t quite believe what is happening.”

  “Does Katarina have a lot of friends?”

  “No, she doesn’t, but the ones she has are close friends. I don’t know where she’d be other than with one of them.”

  “Maybe there’s someone she didn’t see very often? Or someone she has met recently?”

  “Who would that be?”

  “Or maybe someone she met earlier? Someone she had started seeing again recently?”

  “I would have known about it. We have a good relationship. Much better than most mothers and daughters.”

  “I’m not implying that you had any secrets from each other,” Wallander said patiently. “But it’s rare that someone knows everything about another person. Do you know, for instance, who the father of her child is?”

  Wallander hadn’t meant to throw the question in her face like that. She flinched.

  “I’ve tried to get her to talk about it,” she said. “But she refuses.”

  “So you don’t know who he is? You can’t even guess?”

  “I didn’t even know she was seeing anyone.”

  “You knew that she had a relationship with Eugen Blomberg?”

  “I knew about it. I didn’t like him.”

  “Why not? Was it because he was already married?”

  “I didn’t know that until I saw the obituary in the paper. It was a shock.”

  “Why didn’t you like him?”

  “I don’t know. He was unpleasant.”

  “Did you know that he had abused Katarina?”

  Her horror was genuine. For a moment Wallander felt sorry for her. Her world was threatening to collapse. She was being forced to admit that there was a lot she didn’t know about her daughter, that the intimacy she thought they shared was hardly more than a shell.

  “Did he hit her?”

  “Worse than that. He abused her in many different ways.”

  She stared at him in disbelief, but saw that he was telling the truth. She couldn’t defend herself.

  “It’s possible that Eugen Blomberg is the father of her child, even though they weren’t seeing each other.”

  She shook her head slowly and said nothing. Wallander looked at Höglund. She nodded. He took this to mean that he should go on. Birch stood motionless in the background.

  “Her friends,” Wallander said. “We need to talk to them.”

  “I’ve already told you who they are. And you’ve already talked to them.”

  She rattled off three names. Birch nodded in the background.

  “There are no others?”

  “No.”

  “Does she belong to any clubs?”

  “No.”

  “Has she taken any holidays abroad?”

  “We usually go somewhere once a year, in February. To Madeira, Morocco, Tunisia.”

  “Does she have any hobbies?”

  “She reads a lot, she likes to listen to music. Her hair products business takes up most of her time. She works hard.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Sometimes she plays badminton.”

  “Who with? One of the three girlfriends?”

  “With a teacher. I think her name is Carlman. But I’ve never met her.”

  Wallander didn’t know if this was important. At least it was a new name.

  “Do they work at the same school?”

  “Not any more. They did in the past, a few years ago.”

  “You don’t remember her first name?”

  “I’ve never met her.”

  “Where did they usually play?”

  “At Victoria Stadium. It’s within walking distance of her flat.”

  Birch discreetly went into the hall. Wallander knew that he would trace the woman named Carlman. It took him less than five minutes. He came back and signalled to Wallander, who stood up and went out to the hall. In the meantime Höglund tried to clarify what Mrs Taxell really knew about her daughter’s relationship with Eugen Blomberg.

  “That was easy,” Birch said. “Annika Carlman. She’s the one who reserves and pays for the court. I have her address. It’s not far from here.”

  “Let’s go there,” Wallander said.

  He went back into the room.

  “Your daughter’s friend’s name is Annika Carlman,” he said. “She lives on Bankgatan.”

  “I’ve never heard her first name before,” Mrs Taxell said.

  “We’ll leave you two alone for a while,” Wallander went on. “We need to ta
lk to her right away.”

  It took less than ten minutes to get there. It was 6.30 p.m. Annika Carlman lived in a turn-of-the-century block of flats. Birch picked up the security phone. A man’s voice answered, and Birch identified himself. The door opened. A door on the second floor stood open. A man stood there waiting for them. He introduced himself.

  “I’m Annika’s husband,” he said. “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing,” Birch said. “We just need to ask a few questions.”

  He invited them in. The flat was big and lavishly furnished. Somewhere in another room they could hear music and children’s voices. A moment later Annika Carlman came in. She was tall, and was dressed in gym gear.

  “These police officers want to talk to you.”

  “We need to ask some questions about Katarina Taxell,” Wallander said.

  They sat down in a room lined with books. Wallander wondered whether Annika Carlman’s husband was also a teacher.

  He got right to the point.

  “How well do you know Katarina Taxell?”

  “We played badminton together, but we didn’t socialise.”

  “But you do know that she just had a baby?”

  “We haven’t played badminton for five months for precisely that reason.”

  “Were you going to start up again?”

  “We’d agreed she would give me a call.”

  Wallander mentioned the names of Katarina’s three girlfriends.

  “I don’t know them. We just played badminton.”

  “When did you start playing?”

  “About five years ago. We were teachers at the same school.”

  “Is it really possible to play badminton regularly with someone for five years without getting to know her?”

  “Perfectly possible, yes.”

  Wallander pondered how to continue. Annika Carlman gave clear, concise answers. And yet he could feel that they were moving away from something.

  “You never saw her together with anyone else?”

  “Man or woman?”

  “Let’s start with a man.”

  “No.”

  “Not even when you were working together?”

  “She kept to herself. There was one teacher who seemed interested in her. She acted very cold towards him, you might almost say hostile. But she was good with the students. She was smart. A stubborn and smart teacher.”

  “Did you ever see her with a woman?”

  Wallander had given up hope in the value of that question before he even asked it. But he had resigned himself too soon.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,” she replied. “About three years ago.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know her name. But I know what she does. It was a very peculiar situation.”

  “What does she do?”

  “What she’s doing now, I don’t know. But back in those days she was a waitress in a dining car on a train.”

  Wallander frowned.

  “You ran into Katarina Taxell on a train?”

  “I just happened to catch sight of her in town with another woman. I was walking on the other side of the street. We didn’t even say hello to each other. A few days later I took the train to Stockholm. I went into the dining car somewhere after Alvesta. When I was paying the bill I recognised the woman working there. I’d seen her with Katarina.”

  “You say you don’t know what her name is?”

  “No.”

  “But you mentioned this to Katarina later on?”

  “Actually, I didn’t. I forgot all about it. Is it important?”

  Wallander suddenly thought about the timetable he had found in Taxell’s desk.

  “Maybe. What day was it? Which train?”

  “How would I remember that?” she said in surprise. “It was three years ago.”

  “Do you happen to have an old calendar? We’d like you to try and remember.”

  Her husband, who had been sitting quietly and listening, stood up.

  “I’ll get the calendar,” he said. “Was it 1991 or 1992?”

  She thought for a moment.

  “1991. In February or March.”

  Several minutes passed as they waited tensely. The music from somewhere in the flat had been replaced by sounds from a TV. The husband came back and handed her an old black calendar. She leafed through a few months. Then she found the right place.

  “I went to Stockholm on 19 February 1991. On a train that left at 7.12 a.m. Three days later I came back. I’d been to see my sister.”

  “You didn’t see this woman on your return trip?”

  “I’ve haven’t seen her since.”

  “But you’re positive that it was the same woman as the one you’d seen on the street here in Lund with Katarina?”

  “Yes.”

  Wallander regarded her thoughtfully.

  “There’s nothing else you think might be important for us?”

  She shook her head.

  “I realise how little I know about Katarina. But she’s a good badminton player.”

  “How would you describe her as a person?”

  “That’s hard. Maybe that describes her right there. A hard-to-describe person. She’s temperamental. She can be depressed. But that time I saw her on the street with the waitress she was happy and laughing.”

  “There’s nothing else you think might be important?”

  Wallander saw that she was making an effort to be helpful.

  “I think she misses her father,” she said after a moment.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “It’s just a feeling I got. Something to do with the way she acted towards men who were old enough to be her father.”

  “How did she act?”

  “She’d stop behaving naturally, as if unsure of herself.”

  Wallander thought about Katarina’s father, who had died when she was still young. He also wondered if what Annika Carlman had said could explain her relationship with Eugen Blomberg.

  He looked at her again. “Anything else?”

  “No.”

  Wallander nodded to Birch and stood up.

  “We won’t bother you any more,” he said.

  “I’m curious, of course,” she said. “Why are the police asking questions if nothing has happened?”

  “A lot has happened,” Wallander said. “But not to Katarina. I’m afraid that’s all the answer I can give you.”

  They left the flat.

  “We have to find this waitress,” Wallander said.

  “Swedish Railways must have lists of employees,” Birch said. “But I wonder if we’re going to find out anything more tonight. It was three years ago, after all.”

  “We have to try,” Wallander said. “Of course I can’t ask you to do it. We can handle it from Ystad.”

  “You have enough to do,” Birch replied. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Wallander could tell that Birch was sincere. It was no sacrifice.

  They drove back to Hedwig Taxell’s house. Birch dropped Wallander off and continued on to the police station to start looking for the waitress. Wallander wondered whether it was an impossible task.

  Just as he rang the bell, his phone rang. It was Martinsson. Wallander could hear from his voice that he was managing to pull himself out of his depression. It was going better than Wallander had dared hope.

  “How are things?” Martinsson asked. “Are you still in Lund?”

  “We’re trying to trace a waitress who works for Swedish Railways,” Wallander replied.

  Martinsson was wise enough not to ask any further questions.

  “A lot’s been going on here,” he said. “Svedberg managed to get hold of the person who printed Eriksson’s poetry books. He was a very old man, but his mind was sharp. And he didn’t mind telling us what he thought of Eriksson. Apparently he had trouble getting paid for his work.”

  “Did he tell us anything new?”

  “Eriksson seems to have made regular t
rips to Poland since the war. He took advantage of the poverty there to buy women. When he came home, he would boast about his conquests. That old printer really told us what he thought of him.”

  Wallander remembered what Sven Tyrén had told him during one of their first conversations. Now it had been confirmed. So Krista Haberman wasn’t the only Polish woman in Eriksson’s life.

  “Svedberg wondered whether it would be worth contacting the Polish police,” Martinsson said.

  “Maybe,” Wallander replied. “But for the time being, I think we’ll wait on that.”

  “There’s more,” Martinsson said. “I’ll let you talk to Hansson now.”

  Hansson came on the phone.

  “I think I have a clear picture of who worked Eriksson’s land,” he said. “It all seems to be distinguished by one thing.”

  “What?”

  “An unsolved crime. If I can believe my source, Eriksson had an incredible ability to make enemies. You’d think that his life’s great passion was to make new enemies.”

  “The fields,” Wallander said impatiently.

  He could hear how Hansson’s voice changed when he replied. He sounded more serious.

  “The ditch,” Hansson said. “Where we found Eriksson hanging on the stakes.”

  “What about it?”

  “It was dug some years back. It wasn’t there to start with. Nobody really understood why Eriksson needed to put it in. It wasn’t necessary for drainage. The mud was shovelled out, and made the hill taller where the tower is.”

  “A ditch isn’t what I had in mind,” Wallander said. “It doesn’t seem believable that it could have anything to do with a grave.”

  “That was my first thought too,” Hansson said. “But then I heard something that made me change my mind.”

  Wallander held his breath.

  “The ditch was dug in 1967. The farmer I talked to was sure about that. It was dug in the late autumn of 1967.”

  “So that means the ditch was dug about the same time that Krista Haberman disappeared.”

  “My farmer was even more specific. He was certain that the ditch was dug at the end of October. He remembered because of a wedding in Lödinge on the last day of October that year. The times match exactly. Krista Haberman goes on a car ride from Svenstavik. He kills her. Buries her. A ditch appears. A ditch that wasn’t really necessary.”

  “Good,” Wallander said. “This means something.”