by Unknown
On that restless night, he thought mostly about Baiba. Several times he got up and stood at the kitchen window, staring at the streetlight swaying on its wire.
Just after he had come back from Rome, at the end of September, they had decided that she would come to Ystad soon – no later than November. They would have a serious discussion about whether she should move to Sweden. But her visit had been postponed, first once, then again. Each time there were excellent reasons for why she couldn’t come, not yet. Wallander believed her, of course, but he couldn’t quell his feeling of uncertainty. Was it still there, invisible, between them? A rift he hadn’t seen? If so, why hadn’t he seen it? Because he didn’t want to?
Now she was really going to come. They were supposed to meet in Stockholm on 8 December. He would go straight from the police academy to Arlanda to meet her. Linda would join them in the evening and they would all head south to Skåne the following day. How long she would stay, he didn’t know, but this time they would have a serious discussion about the future, not just about the next time they could meet.
The night turned into a long vigil. The weather had turned warmer and the meteorologists were predicting snow. Wallander wandered like a lost soul between his bed and the kitchen window. Now and then he sat down at the kitchen table and made a few notes, in a futile attempt to find a starting point for the lecture he was going to give in Stockholm. All the time he couldn’t stop thinking about Yvonne Ander and her story. She was constantly on his mind, and occasionally she even blocked out thoughts of Baiba.
The person he thought very little about was his father. He was already far away. At times Wallander had trouble recalling all the details of his lined face. He’d had to reach for a photograph and look at it so that the memory wouldn’t completely slip away. During November he had visited Gertrud. The house in Löderup seemed empty, the studio cold and forbidding. Gertrud always gave the impression of being composed, but lonely.
Maybe he finally slept for a few hours towards dawn or maybe he was awake the whole time. By 7 a.m. he was already dressed. At 7.30 a.m. he drove his car, which sputtered suspiciously, to the police station. It was a particularly quiet morning. Martinsson had a cold; Svedberg had gone to Malmö on an assignment. The hall was deserted. He sat down in his office and read through the transcript of his notes of his last conversation with Yvonne Ander. On his desk there was also a transcript of an interview Hansson had carried out with Tore Grundén, the man she had tried to push in front of the train at Hässleholm. His background contained the same ingredients as all the other names in her macabre death ledger. Tore Grundén had once served time for abusing a woman. Wallander could see that Hansson had made it very clear to Grundén that he had been close to being torn to shreds by the oncoming train.
Wallander noticed that there was some tacit understanding among his colleagues of what Ander had done. That this understanding existed at all surprised him. She had shot Höglund, she had attacked and killed men. Normally a team of policemen wouldn’t be supportive of a woman like Yvonne Ander. It was possible to ask whether the police had a friendly attitude towards women at all, unless they were officers with the special stamina that both Ann-Britt Höglund and Lisa Holgersson possessed.
He scribbled his signature and pushed the papers aside. It was 8.45 a.m.
The day before, he had picked up the keys from the estate agent. It was a two-storey brick house in the middle of a big old garden to the north of Ystad. From the upper floor there was a view of the sea. He unlocked the door and went in. The rooms were empty. He walked around in the silence, opened the terrace door to the garden, and tried to picture himself living there.
To his surprise, it was easier than he had imagined. It was obvious that he wasn’t as attached to Mariagatan as he had feared. He asked himself whether Baiba might be happy there. She had talked about her own longing to get away from Riga – to the countryside, but not too far away, not too isolated.
It didn’t take him long to make up his mind that morning. He would buy the house if Baiba liked it. The price was also low enough that he could manage to get the necessary loans.
Just after 10 a.m. he left the house. He promised to give the estate agent a definite answer within the week. After looking at the house, he went on to look for a dog. The kennel was located along the road to Höör, right outside of Sjöbo. Dogs barked from various cages when he turned into the courtyard. The owner was a young woman who, much to his surprise, spoke with a strong Göteborg accent.
“I’d like to look at a black Labrador,” Wallander said.
She showed them to him. The puppies were still too small to leave their mother.
“Do you have children?” she asked.
“None that still live at home unfortunately,” he replied. “Do you have to have children to buy a puppy?”
“Not at all. But this breed of dog is better with children than almost any other.”
Wallander explained that he might buy a house outside of Ystad. If he decided to do that, he also wanted to have a dog. One depended on the other.
“I’ll hold one of the puppies for you. Take your time, but not too long. I always have buyers for Labradors.”
Wallander promised to let her know within the week, just as he had promised the estate agent. He was shocked at the price she mentioned. Could a puppy really cost that much? But he knew that he would buy the dog if the house purchase went through.
He left the kennel at midday. When he came out onto the main road, he suddenly didn’t know where he was going. Was he on his way anywhere at all? He wasn’t going to see Yvonne Ander. For the time being they had no more to say to each other. They would meet again, but not now. Per Åkeson might ask him to expand on some of the details but he doubted it. They had more than enough evidence to convict her.
The truth was that he had nowhere to go. No-one really needed him. Without being fully aware of what he was doing, he headed towards Vollsjö and stopped outside Hansgården. Yvonne Ander owned the house, and would presumably continue to do so during all the years she would spend in prison. She had no close relatives, only her deceased mother. Whether she even had any friends was questionable. Katarina Taxell had been dependent on her, had received her support, just like the other women. But friends? Wallander shuddered at the thought. Yvonne Ander didn’t have a single person who was close to her. She stepped out of a vacuum and she killed people.
Wallander got out of his car. The house emanated desolation. When he walked around it, he noticed a window stood slightly open. That wasn’t good. Someone could easily break in. Wallander found a wooden bench and put it under the window, climbed inside and looked around. The window had been left open out of carelessness. He walked through the rooms, and looked at the baking oven with distaste. There was the invisible boundary. Beyond it he would never be able to understand her.
Now the investigation really was over. They had drawn a final line through the macabre list, interpreted the murderer’s language, and found the solution. That was why he felt superfluous. He was no longer needed. When he returned from Stockholm he would go back to the investigation of car smuggling to the former Eastern bloc countries. Not until then would he truly feel real to himself again.
A phone rang in the silence. Only on the second ring did he realise that it was ringing in his jacket pocket. He took it out. It was Per Åkeson.
“Am I interrupting anything?” he asked. “Where are you?”
Wallander didn’t want to tell him where he was.
“I’m sitting in my car,” he said. “But I’m parked.”
“I assume you haven’t heard the news,” Åkeson said. “There’s not going to be a trial.”
Wallander didn’t understand. The thought had never occurred to him, although it should have. He should have been prepared.
“Yvonne Ander committed suicide,” Åkeson said. “Sometime last night. She was found dead early this morning.”
Wallander held his breath. There was still
something resisting, threatening to burst.
“She seems to have had access to pills. She shouldn’t have had them. At least not so many that she could take her own life. Spiteful people are going to ask whether you were the one who gave them to her.”
Wallander could hear that this was not a veiled question, but he answered it anyway.
“I didn’t help her.”
“The whole thing had a feeling of serenity about it. Everything was in perfect order. She seems to have made up her mind and carried it out. She died in her sleep. It’s easy to understand, of course.”
“Is it?” Wallander asked.
“She left a letter. With your name on it. I have it here on the desk in front of me.”
“I’ll be there in half an hour,” he said.
He stood where he was, with the silent phone in his hand, and tried to gauge what he was really feeling. Emptiness, maybe a vague hint of injustice.
He checked that the window was closed properly and then left the house through the front door.
It was a clear December day. Winter was lurking somewhere nearby.
Wallander went into Per Åkeson’s office. The letter was lying in the middle of the desk.
He took it with him and went down to the harbour. He walked out to the sea rescue service’s red shed and sat down on the bench. The letter was short.
Somewhere in Africa there is a man who killed my mother. Who is looking for him?
That was all.
Who is looking for him?
She had signed the letter with her full name. In the upper right-hand corner she had written the date and time.
5 December, 1994, 2.44 a.m.
The next-to-last entry in her timetable, he thought. She wouldn’t write the last one herself, the doctor would do that, when he put down the time of her death. Then there would be nothing more. The timetable would be closed, her life concluded.
Her departure was formulated as a question or accusation. Or maybe both.
Who is looking for him?
He tore the letter into strips and tossed them into the water. He remembered that once, several years ago, he had torn up a letter that he had decided against sending to Baiba. He had tossed that one into the water too. There was a great difference. He would see Baiba again, and very soon.
He watched the pieces of paper float away over the water. Then he left the harbour and went to the hospital to visit Ann-Britt.
Something was over at last. The autumn in Skåne was moving towards winter.
Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Copyright
About the Author
Also by Henning Mankell
The Fifth Woman
Africa – Sweden: May – August 1993
Prologue
Skåne: 21 September – 11 October 1994
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Skåne: 12 – 17 October 1994
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Skåne: 17 October – 3 November 1994
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Skåne: 4 – 5 December 1994
Epilogue