The Fifth Woman kw-6

by Henning Mankell

  Wallander knew that Holgersson was married to a man who worked for a company that exported computers overseas. They had two grown children, and had bought a house in Hedeskoga, north of Ystad. Wallander hoped her husband gave her plenty of support. She’d need it.

  The doctor got to his feet. Wallander had met him before, but he couldn’t remember his name.

  “It looks like he was strangled,” the doctor said.

  “Not hanged?”

  The doctor held out his hands.

  “Strangled with bare hands,” he said. “It causes different types of pressure wounds than a rope. You can see the marks from the thumbs quite clearly.”

  A strong man, Wallander thought instantly. A person in good shape, who has no qualms about killing with his bare hands.

  “How long ago?” he asked.

  “It’s impossible to say for sure. Within the last 24 hours, not longer. You’ll have to wait for the pathologist’s report.”

  “Can we take him down?”

  “I’ve finished,” said the doctor.

  “Then I can get started,” muttered Nyberg.

  Hoglund came up beside them. “Vanja Andersson is here. She’s waiting in a car down there.”

  “How did she take the news?” asked Wallander.

  “It’s a hell of a way to be woken up, of course, but I got the feeling she wasn’t surprised.”

  Nyberg had unwound the ropes. Runfeldt’s body lay on a stretcher.

  “Bring her up here,” Wallander said. “Then she can go straight home.”

  Vanja Andersson was very pale. Wallander noticed she was dressed in black. She looked at the dead man’s face, took a deep breath, and nodded.

  “You can identify him as Gosta Runfeldt?” Wallander asked. He groaned inwardly at how clumsy this sounded.

  “He’s so thin,” she murmured.

  Wallander pricked up his ears. “What do you mean, thin?”

  “His face is all sunken in. He didn’t look like this three weeks ago.”

  Wallander knew that death could alter a person’s face dramatically, but he guessed that Vanja Andersson was talking about something else.

  “You mean he’s lost weight since the last time you saw him?”

  “Yes. He’s grown terribly thin.”

  Wallander sensed that what she was saying was important.

  “You don’t have to stay here any longer,” he said. “We’ll drive you home.”

  She gave him a forlorn look.

  “What am I supposed to do with the shop?” she asked. “And all the flowers?”

  “Tomorrow you can leave it closed, I’m sure,” Wallander answered. “Start with that. Don’t think any further ahead.”

  She nodded mutely and allowed Hoglund to lead her away. Wallander thought about what she had said. For almost three weeks Runfeldt had been missing without a trace. When he reappeared, tied to a tree and possibly strangled, he was inexplicably thin. Wallander knew what that meant: imprisonment.

  He stood still. Imprisonment could be related to a wartime situation. Soldiers take prisoners.

  He was interrupted when Chief Holgersson stumbled and almost fell as she walked over to him.

  “You’re freezing,” she said.

  “I forgot to bring a warmer jumper,” Wallander replied. “Some things you never learn.”

  She nodded at the stretcher. It was being carried off towards the ambulance.

  “What do you think of all this?” she asked.

  “Same killer. It wouldn’t make sense to think otherwise.”

  “The doctor says he was strangled.”

  “I try not to draw conclusions too soon,” Wallander said. “But I think I can imagine how it all happened. He was alive when he was tied to the tree. Maybe unconscious, but he was strangled here. And he didn’t put up any resistance.”

  “How can you be sure of that?”

  “The ropes were tied loosely. If he’d wanted to, he could have struggled free.”

  “Couldn’t the loose ropes indicate that he did try to free himself?”

  Good question, thought Wallander. Lisa Holgersson is a detective, all right.

  “That could be,” he replied. “But I don’t think so, because of something Vanja Andersson said. That he had grown terribly thin.”

  “I don’t get the connection.”

  “He would have been very weak.”

  She understood.

  “He was left hanging on the ropes,” Wallander went on. “The killer didn’t try to hide the body. It is very like what happened with Eriksson.”

  “Why here?” she asked. “Why tie a person to a tree? Why this brutality?”

  “When we understand that, maybe we’ll know why this happened in the first place,” Wallander said.

  “Have you any ideas?”

  “I have plenty of ideas, but I think the best thing we can do now is let Nyberg and his people work in peace. It’s more important to have a meeting in Ystad than to wander around out here wearing ourselves out. There’s nothing left to see, anyway.”

  She didn’t object. By 2 a.m. Nyberg and his forensic technicians were alone in the woods. It had started to drizzle and the wind came up. Wallander was the last to leave the scene.

  What do we do now? he asked himself. How do we proceed? We don’t have a motive or a suspect. All we have is a diary that belonged to a man named Harald Berggren. A bird-watcher and a passionate orchid lover have been killed with consummate savagery.

  He tried to remember what Hoglund had said. It was important. Something about the masculine world of Berggren. This made him think of a killer with a military background. Harald Berggren had been a mercenary. A person who defended neither his country, nor a cause. A man who killed people for a monthly wage, paid in cold cash.

  At least we have a starting point, he thought. We have to stick with it until it collapses. He went over to say good-bye to Nyberg.

  “Is there anything special you want us to look for?” he asked.

  “No, but look for anything that reminds you of what happened to Eriksson.”

  “I think everything does,” Nyberg said. “Only the bamboo stakes are missing.”

  “I want dogs up here early tomorrow,” Wallander said.

  “I’ll probably still be here,” said Nyberg dismally.

  “I’m going to bring up your work situation with Lisa,” Wallander said, hoping it would at least offer him a modicum of encouragement.

  “It probably won’t do any good.”

  “Well, it won’t do any good not to try,” Wallander said, putting an end to the conversation.

  By 3 a.m. they were all gathered in the conference room. Wallander looked at the tired, sallow faces round the table, and realised that his main task was to infuse the investigative team with renewed energy. From experience he knew that there were moments in any investigation when it seemed as though all their self-confidence was gone. That moment had arrived unusually early this time.

  We could have used a calm autumn, Wallander thought. The summer wore us out. He sat down and Hansson brought him a cup of coffee.

  “This isn’t going to be easy,” he began. “What we feared most has happened. Gosta Runfeldt has been murdered. Apparently by the same person who killed Holger Eriksson. We don’t know what this means, and we don’t know whether we’re going to have more unpleasant surprises. We don’t know if this will be similar to what we went through this summer. We shouldn’t draw any parallels beyond the fact that the same man has been at work. There are a lot of differences between these two crimes. More differences than similarities.”

  He paused for comments. No-one had anything to say.

  “We’ll have to continue working on a wide front. We have to track down Harald Berggren. We have to find out why Runfeldt wasn’t on that plane to Nairobi. We have to find out why he ordered sophisticated bugging equipment just before he died. We have to find a connection between these two men, who seem to have lived their lives with no conta
ct with one another. Since the victims were obviously not chosen at random, there has to be some kind of link.”

  Still nobody had any comments. Wallander decided to adjourn the meeting. What they needed more than anything was a few hours’ sleep. They would meet again in the morning.

  Outside, the wind and rain had got worse. As Wallander hurried across the wet car park to his car, he thought about Nyberg and his forensic technicians. He also thought about Vanja Andersson having said that Runfeldt had become emaciated in the three weeks that he was missing. This had to mean imprisonment. But where had he been held captive? Why? And by whom?

  CHAPTER 14

  Wallander slept fitfully under a blanket on the sofa in his living room, since he had to get up in a few hours. It had been quiet in Linda’s room when he’d come in. He had dozed off, then woken abruptly, drenched in sweat, after a nightmare he could only vaguely recall. He had dreamed about his father; they were in Rome again, and something frightening happened. What it was vanished into the darkness. Maybe in the dream, death had already been with them, like a warning. He sat up on the sofa with the blanket wrapped around him. It was 5 a.m. The alarm clock would ring any minute now. He sat there heavy and unmoving, exhaustion like a dull ache through his whole body. It seemed to take all his strength to get up and go to the bathroom. After a shower he felt a little better. He made breakfast and woke Linda at 5.45 a.m. By 6.30 a.m. they were on their way out to the airport. She was groggy and didn’t say much during the ride. She didn’t seem to wake up until they turned off the E65 for the last few kilometres to Sturup.

  “What happened last night?” she asked.

  “Someone found a dead man in the woods.”

  “Can’t you tell me any more than that?”

  “The body was found by an orienteer who was out running. He practically tripped over it.”

  “Who was it?”

  “The orienteer or the dead man?”

  “The dead man.”

  “A florist.”

  “Did he commit suicide?”

  “No, unfortunately.”

  “Unfortunately?”

  “He was murdered, and that means a lot of work for us.”

  She was silent for a while.

  “I don’t see how you stand it,” she said.

  “I don’t either. But I have to. Somebody has to.”

  The question she asked next astonished him.

  “Do you think I would make a good policewoman?”

  “I thought you had other plans.”

  “I do, but answer the question.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “You might.”

  They didn’t say any more. Wallander pulled into the car park. She had only a backpack, which he lifted out of the boot. When he went to follow her in, she shook her head.

  “Go home now,” she said. “You’re so tired you can hardly stand up.”

  “I have to work,” he replied. “But you’re right, I am tired.”

  Then there was a moment of sadness. They talked about his father, her grandfather. They said goodbye, and he watched her vanish through the glass doors that slid open and closed behind her.

  He sat in the car and thought about something she had said. Was what made death so terrifying the fact that you had to be dead for such a long time?

  He drove off. The grey landscape seemed just as dismal as the entire investigation. Wallander thought through what had happened. A man is impaled in a ditch. Another man is tied to a tree and strangled. Could deaths be any more repellent than those? It hadn’t been any better seeing his father lying among his paintings. He needed to see Baiba again soon. He was going to call her. He couldn’t stand the loneliness any more. It had been going on long enough. He had been divorced for five years. He was on the way to becoming an old, shaggy dog, scared of people. And that’s not what he wanted to be.

  He arrived at the police station, getting himself some coffee straight away. Then he called Gertrud. Her voice was cheerful. His sister was still there. Since Wallander was so busy with the investigation, they had agreed that the two of them would go through his father’s meagre estate. His assets consisted mainly of the house in Loderup, but there were almost no debts. Gertrud asked if there was anything special that Wallander wanted to have. At first he said no. Then he changed his mind and said he’d like a painting, with a grouse, from the stacks of finished canvases leaning against the walls of the studio. Not the one his father had almost finished when he’d died.

  He turned into a policeman again, starting by quickly reading a report on Hoglund’s conversation with the woman who delivered the post to Eriksson. Hoglund wrote well, without awkward sentences or irrelevant details, but there was nothing that seemed to have direct significance for the investigation. The last time Eriksson had hung out the little sign on his letter box that meant he needed to talk to the postwoman was several months ago. As far as she could remember, it had had something to do with money orders. She hadn’t noticed anything unusual at Eriksson’s farm recently, or seen any strange cars or people in the area.

  Wallander put the report aside, pulled over his notebook, and wrote some notes on the investigation. Someone had to interview Anita Lagergren at the travel agency in Malmo. When had Runfeldt reserved his trip? What was this orchid safari all about? They had to chart his life, just as they had to for Eriksson. It was especially important that they talked to his children. Wallander also wanted to know more about the equipment Runfeldt had bought. What exactly was it for? Why would a florist have these things? He was convinced that it was crucial to an understanding of what had happened. Wallander pushed the notebook away and sat hesitantly with his hand on the telephone. It was 8.15 a.m., and it was possible that Nyberg was asleep. But it couldn’t be helped. He dialled his mobile phone. Nyberg answered at once, still out in the woods. Wallander asked him how it was going.

  “We’ve got dogs here,” Nyberg said. “They’ve picked up the scent from the rope at the logging site. But that’s not so strange, since it’s the only way up here. I think we can assume that Runfeldt didn’t walk. There must have been a car.”

  “Any tyre tracks?”

  “Quite a few. But I can’t tell you which is which yet.”

  “Anything else?”

  “The rope is from a factory in Denmark.”

  “Denmark?”

  “I should think it could be bought just about anywhere that sells rope. Anyway, it seems new. Bought for the occasion,” said Nyberg, to Wallander’s disgust.

  “Have you been able to find any sign that he resisted being tied to the tree? Or that he tried to work his way loose?”

  “No. I haven’t found any traces of a struggle nearby, the ground wasn’t disturbed. And there are no marks on the rope or the tree trunk. He was tied up there, and he stood still.”

  “How do you interpret that?”

  “There are two possibilities,” Nyberg replied. “Either he was already dead, or at least unconscious, when he was tied up, or else he chose not to resist. But that’s hard to believe.”

  Wallander thought about it.

  “There’s a third possibility,” he said finally. “Runfeldt simply didn’t have the strength to put up any resistance.”

  That was also a possibility, and maybe the most likely, Nyberg agreed.

  “Let me ask one more thing,” Wallander said. “I know you can’t be certain, but we always imagine how something might have happened. Nobody guesses more often than policemen do, even though we might deny that we do. Was there more than one person there, do you think?”

  “There are plenty of reasons why there should have been more than one person. Dragging a man into the woods and tying him up isn’t that easy. But I doubt that there was.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, to be honest.”

  “Go back to the ditch in Lodinge. What sort of feeling did you have there?”

  “The same. There should have been more than one. But I’m not sure.
/>   “I have that feeling too,” Wallander said. “And it bothers me.”

  “At any rate, I think we’re dealing with a person of great physical strength,” Nyberg said. “There are plenty of indicators.”

  Wallander had no more questions.

  “Otherwise nothing else at the scene?”

  “A couple of beer cans and a false nail. That’s it.”

  “A false nail?”

  “The kind that women use. But it could have been here quite a while.”

  “Try to get some sleep,” Wallander said.

  “And when would I have time for that?” Nyberg answered. Wallander could hear him suddenly getting annoyed. He hung up, and the phone rang instantly. It was Martinsson.

  “Can I come and see you?” he asked. “When are we supposed to have another meeting?”

  “Nine o’clock. We’ve got time.”

  Wallander hung up. Martinsson must have come up with something. He could feel the tension. What they needed most of all right now was a breakthrough.

  Martinsson came in and sat down. He got straight to the point.

  “I’ve been thinking about all that mercenary stuff. And Berggren’s diary. This morning when I woke up it struck me that I’ve actually met a person who was in the Congo at the same time as Harald Berggren.”

  “As a mercenary?” asked Wallander in surprise.

  “No. As a member of the Swedish UN contingent that was supposed to disarm the Belgian forces in Katanga province.”

  Wallander shook his head. “I was 12 or 13 when all that happened. I don’t remember much about it. Actually, nothing except that Dag Hammarskjold was in a plane crash.”

  “I wasn’t even born,” Martinsson said. “But I remember something about it from school.”

  “Who was it you met?”

  “Several years ago I was going to meetings of the People’s Party,” Martinsson continued. “There was often coffee afterwards. I got an ulcer from all the coffee I drank in those days.”

  Wallander drummed his fingers impatiently on the desk.

  “At one of the meetings I wound up sitting next to a man of about 60. How we got to talking about it I don’t know, but he told me he’d been a captain and adjutant to General von Horn, who was commander of the Swedish UN force in the Congo. I remember him mentioning that there were mercenaries involved.”