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 Gosta Runfeldt.
“Gosta 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 Malmo.”
“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?”
“Gosta 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 Gosta 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. “Gosta just wouldn’t do anything like this.”
“How long have you worked for him?”
“Nearly eleven years.”
“And things have gone well?”
“Gosta 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 Skane.”
“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. Gosta 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 su
itcase. 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. Gosta 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 Dragor.”
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. Gosta 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 Dragor. 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.
He paced around the flat, trying to understand. The telephone in the kitchen rang, making him jump. He hurried over to answer it. It was Hansson, calling from Eriksson’s.
“I heard from Martinsson that Runfeldt has disappeared,” he said.
“He’s not here, at any rate,” Wallander answered.
“You have any ideas?”
“No. I think he did intend to take his trip, but something prevented him.”
“You think there’s a connection?”
Wallander thought about it. What did he actually believe? He didn’t know.
“We can’t rule out the possibility,” was all he said.
He asked what had happened out at the farm, but Hansson had nothing new to report. After he hung up, Wallander walked through the flat once more. He had a feeling that there was something he should be noticing. Finally he gave up. He looked through the post out in the hall. There was the letter from the travel agency. An electricity bill. There was also a receipt for a parcel from a mail-order company in Boras. It had to be paid for at the post office. Wallander stuck the slip in his pocket.
Vanja Andersson was waiting for him when he arrived with the keys. He asked her to get in touch with him if she thought of anything else that might be important. Then he drove to the station. He left the slip with Ebba and asked her to have someone pick up the parcel. At 1 p.m. he closed the door to his office. He was hungry. But he was more anxious than hungry. He recognised the feeling. He knew what it meant.
He doubted that they would find Gosta Runfeldt alive.
CHAPTER 8
At midnight, Ylva Brink finally sat down to have a cup of coffee. She was one of two midwives working the night of 30 September in the maternity ward of Ystad’s hospital. Her colleague, Lena Soderstrom, was with a woman who had just started to have contractions. It had been a busy night — without drama, but with a steady stream of tasks that had to be carried out.
They were understaffed. Two midwives and two nurses had to handle all the work. There was an obstetrician they could call if there was serious haemorrhaging or any other complication, but otherwise they were on their own. It used to be worse, thought Ylva Brink as she sat down on the sofa with her coffee. A few years ago she had been the only midwife on duty all night long, and sometimes this had resulted in difficulties. They had finally managed to talk some sense into the hospital administration and push through their demand to have at least two midwives on every night.
Her office was in the middle of a large ward. The glass walls allowed her to see what was going on outside. In the daytime there was constant activity, but at night, everything was different. She liked working nights. A lot of her colleagues preferred other shifts. They had families, and they couldn’t get enough sleep during the day. But Ylva Brink’s children were grown up, and her husband was chief engineer on an oil tanker that sailed between ports in the Middle East and Asia. For her it was peaceful to work while everyone else was asleep.
She drank her coffee with pleasure and took a piece of sugar cake from a tray on her desk. One of the nurses came in and sat down, and then the other one joined them. A radio was playing softly in the corner. They talked about autumn and the persistent rain. One of the nurses had heard from her mother, who could predict the weather, that it was going to be a long, cold winter.
Ylva Brink thought back on the times when S
kane had been snowed in. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, it was terrible for women who were in labour but couldn’t get to the hospital. She remembered sitting freezing in a tractor as it crept along through the blizzard and snowdrifts to an isolated farm north of town. The woman was haemorrhaging. It was the only time in her years as a midwife that she had been seriously afraid of losing a patient. And that couldn’t be allowed to happen. Women simply did not die giving birth in Sweden.
But still, it was autumn now. Ylva came from the far north of Sweden, and sometimes missed the melancholy Norrland forests. She had never got used to the open landscape of Skane where the wind reigned supreme. But her husband had been born in Trelleborg and couldn’t imagine living anywhere but in Skane. When he had time at home, that is.
Her musings were interrupted when Lena Soderstrom came into the room. She was about 30. She could be my daughter, Ylva thought. I’m twice her age.
“She probably won’t deliver before early morning,” Lena said. “We’ll get to go home.”
“It’ll be quiet tonight,” said Ylva. “Take a nap if you’re tired.”
A nurse hurried by in the hall. Lena Soderstrom was drinking her tea. The other two nurses sat bent over a crossword puzzle.
Already October, Ylva thought. The middle of autumn already. Soon winter will be here. In December Harry has a holiday, a month off, and we’ll remodel the kitchen. Not because it needs it, but so he can have something to do. Harry’s not wild about holidays. He gets restless.
Someone had pressed a call button. A nurse got up and left. A few minutes later she came back.
“Maria in Room 3 has a headache,” she said, sitting back down to her crossword puzzle. Ylva sipped her coffee. Suddenly she realised that she was sitting wondering about something, without knowing exactly what it was. Then it came to her. The nurse who had walked past in the hall. Hadn’t all the women working in the ward been here in the office? And no call bells had rung from intensive care. She must have been imagining things.
But at the same time she knew she hadn’t been.
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