The Fifth Woman kw-6

by Henning Mankell

  After the ceremony they drove to Loderup. Wallander felt relieved that it was over. How he would react later he had no idea. He belonged to a generation that was particularly ill-prepared to accept that death was always nearby, he thought. This was intensified for him by the fact that he had to deal with dead people so often in his work.

  On the night of the funeral he and Linda stayed up talking for hours. She was going back to Stockholm early the next morning. Wallander asked tentatively whether she would visit him less frequently now that her grandfather was gone, but she promised that she would come more often. In turn, Wallander promised that he wouldn’t neglect Gertrud.

  When he went to bed that night he felt that it was time to get back to work at full speed. For a week he had been distracted. Only when he had put some distance between himself and his father’s sudden death could he begin to come to terms with it. To get that distance he had to work. There was no other way.

  I never did find out why he didn’t want me to be a policeman, he thought before he went to sleep. Now I’ll never know. If there is a spirit world, which I doubt, then my father and Rydberg can keep each other company. Even though they met very seldom when they were alive, they would find a lot to talk about.

  She had made an exact and detailed timetable for Runfeldt’s last hours. He was so weak now that he wouldn’t be able to put up any resistance. She had broken him down. The worm hidden in the flower portends the flower’s death, she thought as she unlocked the door to the house in Vollsjo. According to her timetable, she was to arrive at 4 p.m. She was three minutes ahead of schedule. She had to wait until dark. Then she would pull him out of the oven. For safety’s sake she’d put handcuffs on him. And a gag. But nothing over his eyes. Even though he’d have trouble with the light after so many days spent in utter darkness, after a few hours he would see again. She wanted him to really see her. And then she would show him the photographs. The pictures that would make him understand.

  There were some elements she couldn’t completely ignore which might affect her planning. One was the risk that he might be so weak that he couldn’t stand up, so she had borrowed a small baggage cart from the Central Station in Malmo. No-one had seen her taking it. She could use it to roll him out to the car if necessary.

  The rest of the timetable was quite simple. Just before 9 p.m. she would drive him to the woods. She would tie him to the tree she had already picked out. And show him the photographs.

  Then she would strangle him. Leave him where he was. She would be home in bed no later than midnight. Her alarm clock would go off at 5.15 a.m., and by 7.15 she’d be at work.

  Her timetable was perfect. Nothing could go wrong. She sat down in a chair and looked at the oven towering like a sacrificial altar in the middle of the room. My mother would have understood, she thought. If no-one does it, it won’t happen. Evil must be driven out with evil. Where there is no justice, it must be created.

  She took her timetable out of her pocket and looked at the clock. In three hours and 15 minutes, Gosta Runfeldt would die.

  Lars Olsson didn’t really feel much like training on the evening of 11 October. He had been wondering whether he should go out on his run or forget about it. It wasn’t just that he felt tired, there was a film on TV that he wanted to see. In the end he decided to go for his run after the movie, even though it would be late.

  Olsson lived on a farm near Svarte. He had been born there, and still lived with his parents although he was over 30. He was the part owner of a digger and was the one who knew best how to operate it. This week he was busy digging a ditch for a new drainage system on a farm in Skarby. He was also a devoted orienteer. He lived for the joy of running in the Swedish woods. He ran for a team in Malmo that was preparing for a national night-orienteering run. He had often asked himself why he devoted so much time to it. What was the point of running around in the woods, often cold and wet, his body aching, with a map and compass? Was this really something to spend his life doing? But he knew he was a good orienteer. He had a feeling for the terrain, as well as both speed and endurance.

  He watched the film on TV, but it wasn’t as good as he expected. Just after 11 p.m. he started out on his run, headed for the woods just north of the farm, on the boundary of Marsvinsholm’s huge fields. He could choose to run either five or eight kilometres, depending on which path he took. Tonight he chose the shorter route. He strapped his running light to his head and started off. It had rained that day, heavy showers followed by sunshine. He could smell the wet earth. He ran along the path into the woods. The tree trunks glistened in the light from his headlamp. In the densest part of the forest there was a little creek. If he kept close to it, it made a good shortcut. He decided to do that. He turned off the path and ran up a small hill.

  Suddenly he stopped short. He had seen someone in the light of his lamp. At first he couldn’t work out what he was looking at. Then he realised that a half-naked man was tied to a tree in front of him. Olsson stood quite still. He was breathing hard and felt very frightened. He took a quick look around. The lamp cast its glow over trees and bushes, but he was alone. Cautiously he took a few steps forward. The man was hanging over the ropes tied around his body.

  He didn’t have to go any closer. He could see that the man was dead. Without really knowing why, he glanced at his watch. It was 11.19 p.m.

  He turned around and ran home. He had never run so fast in his life. Without even taking the time to remove his headlamp he called the police in Ystad. The officer who took the call listened attentively, then without hesitating, he called up Kurt Wallander’s name on his computer screen and punched in his home number.

  Skane

  12–17 October 1994

  CHAPTER 13

  Wallander was awake thinking about his father and Rydberg lying in the same cemetery when the telephone next to his bed rang. He grabbed it before the ringing woke Linda. With a feeling of mounting helplessness he listened to what the officer on duty had to say. Information was still sparse. Officers hadn’t yet reached the woods south of Marsvinsholm. It was possible that the runner had been mistaken, but that was unlikely. The officer thought he sounded unusually lucid even though he was breathless and frightened. Wallander said he’d come at once. He dressed as quietly as he could, but Linda came out in her nightgown as he sat in the kitchen writing her a note.

  “What’s happened?” she asked.

  “They found a man dead in the woods,” he replied. “That means they call me.”

  She shook her head.

  “Don’t you get scared?”

  “Why should I be scared?”

  “About all the people who are dying.”

  He sensed rather than understood what she was trying to say.

  “I can’t. It’s my job. Somebody has to deal with it.”

  He promised to be back in plenty of time to drive her to the airport in the morning.

  It wasn’t until he was on his way out to Marsvinsholm that it occurred to him that it might be Gosta Runfeldt who had been found in the woods. He had just left the town behind him when his phone rang. Police officers had confirmed the report.

  “Any identification on him?” asked Wallander.

  “No. Sounds like he barely had any clothes on. It looks pretty bad.”

  Wallander felt his stomach tying itself in knots, but he didn’t say anything.

  “They’ll meet you at the crossroads. Take the first exit towards Marsvinsholm.”

  Wallander hung up and accelerated. He was dreading the sight that awaited him.

  He saw the squad car at a distance and slowed to a stop. An officer was standing outside the car. He recognised Peters. Wallander rolled down his window and gave him an inquiring look.

  “It’s not a pretty sight,” said Peters.

  Wallander knew what that meant. Peters had plenty of experience. He wouldn’t use those words casually.

  “Has he been identified?”

  “He barely has a stitch on. Go see f
or yourself.”

  “And the man who found him?”

  “He’s there too.”

  Peters went back to his car. Wallander drove behind him. They reached a clearing. The road ended near the remains of a logging operation.

  “We’ll have to walk the last stretch,” Peters said.

  Wallander got his gumboots out of the boot of his car. Peters and his partner, a young officer named Bergman who Wallander didn’t really know, had brought powerful torches. They followed a path that led uphill to a little creek. There was a strong smell of autumn in the air. Wallander realised he should have worn a heavier jumper. If he had to stay out in the woods all night he was going to get cold.

  “We’re almost there,” Peters said.

  Wallander knew he said it to warn him to brace himself. Even so, the sight that greeted him took him by surprise. The two torches shone with macabre precision on a man who hung, half-naked, tied to a tree. The beams of light quivered. Wallander stood quite still. Close by a night bird cried. He advanced cautiously. Peters shone his light so Wallander could see where he was putting his feet. The man’s head and torso had fallen forward. Wallander got down on his knees to look at his face, and confirmed what he had suspected. Even though the photographs he had seen in Runfeldt’s flat were several years old, there was no doubt that it was him. Now they knew what had happened.

  Wallander got to his feet and took a step back. There was no longer any doubt in his mind about another thing. There was a connection between Eriksson and Runfeldt. The killer’s language was the same, even if the choice of words was different this time. A pungee pit and a tree. It simply couldn’t be a coincidence.

  He turned towards Peters. “Get the team,” he said.

  Peters nodded. Wallander discovered he had left his telephone in the car. He asked Bergman to get it for him, and to bring the torch from the glove compartment.

  “Where’s the man who found him?” he asked.

  Peters shone his torch to one side. On a rock sat a man in a tracksuit, his face buried in his hands.

  “His name is Lars Olsson,” Peters said. “He lives on a farm near here.”

  “What was he doing out in the woods in the middle of the night?”

  “He’s an orienteer,” said Peters, handing him his torch.

  Wallander went up to the man, who looked up quickly when the beam struck his face. He was very pale. Wallander introduced himself and sat down on a rock next to him, shivering involuntarily.

  “So you’re the one who found him.”

  Olsson told Wallander his story. About the bad movie on TV and his training run; how he’d decided to take a shortcut, and how he’d caught sight of the man in the beam of his headlamp.

  “You’ve given a very exact time,” Wallander said, remembering what the officer on duty had told him.

  “I looked at my watch,” Olsson replied. “It’s a habit of mine — or rather a bad habit. When something important happens I look at my watch. If I could have, I would have looked at my watch when I was born.”

  Wallander smiled at him.

  “So you take a run out here almost every night.”

  “I ran here last night, but earlier in the evening. I ran two routes. The long one first, followed by the short one. Then I took a shortcut.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Between 9.30 and 10.00 p.m.”

  “And you didn’t see anything then?”

  “No.”

  “Could he have been here by the tree without you seeing him?”

  Olsson thought for a moment and then shook his head.

  “I always pass close to that tree. I would have seen him.”

  Wallander got up from the rock. There were torches approaching through the woods.

  “Who would do something like this?” Olsson asked.

  “That’s what I’m wondering too,” Wallander replied.

  As Bergman took down Olsson’s name and phone number, Peters talked to the station. Wallander took a deep breath and approached the man hanging in the ropes. It astonished him for a moment that he wasn’t thinking about his father at all, now that he was in the presence of death. But deep inside he knew why. He had been through it so many times before. Dead people weren’t just dead, they had nothing human left in them. After the first wave of disgust passed, it was like approaching any other lifeless object.

  Wallander felt the back of Runfeldt’s neck cautiously. All body heat was gone. He hadn’t really expected there to be any. Trying to determine the time of death outdoors was difficult. Wallander looked at the man’s bare chest. The colour of the skin told him nothing about how long he had been hanging there either. Wallander shone his torch at Rundfeldt’s throat and saw bruising. That could mean that he had been hanged. Next he inspected the ropes. They were wound round his body from his thighs up to his ribs. The knots were simple, and the ropes weren’t tied very tightly. It surprised him.

  He took a step backwards and shone his light on the whole body. Then he walked around the tree, watching carefully where he put his feet. He made only one circuit. He assumed that Peters had told Bergman not to tramp around unnecessarily. Peters was still talking on the phone. Wallander needed another jumper. He knew he should keep a spare in his car. It was going to be a long night.

  He tried to imagine the sequence of events. The loosely tied ropes made him nervous. He thought about Eriksson. Runfeldt’s murder might provide the solution. When they resumed the investigative work they would have to develop double vision. The clues would keep pointing in two directions at the same time. This could increase their confusion, and make the landscape of the investigation more and more difficult to define.

  For a moment Wallander turned off his torch and thought in the dark. Peters was still talking on the phone. Bergman stood motionless nearby. Gosta Runfeldt hung dead in his loosely tied ropes. Is this a beginning, a middle, or an end? Wallander wondered. Do we have another serial killer on our hands? An even more difficult chain of events to unravel than we had in the summer? He had no answers. It was too early, far too early.

  He heard engines in the distance. Peters went to meet the emergency vehicles that were approaching. Wallander thought of Linda and hoped she was asleep. Whatever happened, he would drive her to the airport in the morning. Suddenly a great wave of grief for his father surged through him. He longed for Baiba. And he was exhausted. He felt burnt out. All the energy he had felt on his return from Rome was gone. There was nothing left.

  He forced himself to push away these dismal thoughts. Martinsson and Hansson came tramping through the trees, followed by Hoglund and Nyberg. After them came the ambulance men and forensic technicians. Then Svedberg. Finally a doctor. They gave the impression of a poorly organised caravan that had wound up in the wrong place. Wallander started by gathering his closest colleagues round him in a circle. A floodlight hooked up to a portable generator was already aiming its eerie light on the man tied to the tree. Wallander couldn’t help but be reminded of the macabre experience they had had by the ditch on Eriksson’s property. It was being repeated. The framework was different and yet the same. The killer’s designs were related.

  “It’s Gosta Runfeldt,” said Wallander. “We’ll have to wake up Vanja Andersson and bring her out here to give us a positive identification as soon as possible. We can wait until we’ve taken him down from the tree. She doesn’t need to see that.”

  He described how Runfeldt had been found.

  “He’s been missing for almost three weeks,” he went on. “But if I’m not mistaken, and if Lars Olsson is right, he’s been dead for less than 24 hours. At least he hasn’t been tied to this tree any longer than that. So where has he been all this time?”

  “I don’t believe that this is a coincidence. It has to be the same killer. We must find out what these two men have in common. So there are three investigations: Eriksson, Runfeldt, and the two of them together.”

  “What happens if we can’t find a connection?” S
vedberg asked.

  “We will,” replied Wallander firmly. “Sooner or later. The planning of both of these murders seems to exclude the possibility that the victims were chosen at random. Both men were killed with a specific aim in mind, for specific reasons.”

  “Gosta Runfeldt couldn’t have been homosexual,” Martinsson said. “He was married with two children.”

  “He could have been bisexual,” Wallander said. “But it’s too soon for those questions. We have things to do that are more urgent.”

  The circle broke up. It hadn’t taken long to organise their work. Wallander went to speak to Nyberg, who was waiting for the doctor to finish.

  “So it’s happened again,” Nyberg said in a weary voice.

  “Yes,” Wallander said, “and we have to get through it one more time.”

  “Just yesterday I decided to take a couple of weeks’ holiday,” Nyberg said. “As soon as we find out who killed Eriksson. I thought I’d go to the Canary Islands. Not particularly imaginative, maybe — but warmer.”

  Nyberg seldom talked about personal matters. Wallander could see that he was exhausted. His workload was unreasonable. Wallander decided to take it up with Chief Holgersson. They didn’t have the right to go on exploiting Nyberg’s dedication. Just then he saw that the chief had arrived, and stood talking to Hansson and Hoglund. She too had a lot on her plate, Wallander thought. With this second murder the media would have a field day. Her predecessor, Bjork, could never handle pressure. Now they’d see if she could.