The Fifth Woman kw-6

by Henning Mankell

  “Does it really have to be the same man?” he asked. “I think this seems different.”

  Wallander was as sure about this as he could possibly be.

  “No. It’s the same killer. We’d better assume that it is, anyway.”

  He sent them off. There was nothing more for them to do out there on the shore of Krageholm Lake. The cars drove away. Wallander stood and gazed out at the water. The swan was gone. He looked at the men working on the jetty. At the ambulance, the police cars, the crime-scene tape. Everything about it suddenly gave him a sense of depthless unreality. He encountered nature surrounded by plastic tape stretched out to protect crime sites. Everywhere he went there were dead people. He could look at a swan on the water, but in the foreground lay a man who had just been pulled dead out of a sack.

  His work was little more than a poorly paid test of endurance. He was being paid to endure this. The plastic tape wound through his life like a snake.

  He went over to Nyberg, who was stretching his back.

  “We’ve found a cigarette butt,” he said. “That’s all. At least out here on the jetty. We’ve already done a superficial examination of the sand for drag marks. There aren’t any. Whoever carried the sack was strong. Unless he lured the man out here and then stuffed him in the sack.”

  Wallander shook his head.

  “Let’s assume that the sack was carried,” he said. “Carried with its contents.”

  “Do you think there’s any reason to dredge the lake?”

  “I don’t think so. The man was unconscious when he was brought here. There must have been a car involved. Then the sack was thrown in the water. The car drove off.”

  “So we’ll wait on the dragging,” Nyberg said.

  “Tell me what you see,” Wallander said.

  Nyberg grimaced.

  “It could be the same man,” he said. “The violence, the cruelty, they all look familiar. Even though he varies things.”

  “Do you think a woman could have done this?”

  “I say the same thing you do,” Nyberg replied. “I’d rather not believe that. But I can also tell you that she would have to be capable of carrying 80 kilos without difficulty. How many women can do that?”

  “I don’t know any,” said Wallander. “But I’m sure they exist.”

  Nyberg went back to his work. Wallander was about to leave the jetty when the swan caught his eye. He wished he had a piece of bread. It was pecking at something near the shore. Wallander took a step closer. The swan hissed and turned back towards the lake.

  Wallander went over to one of the police cars and asked to be driven to Ystad. On the way back to town he tried to think. What he had feared most had now happened. The killer was not finished. They knew nothing about him. Was he at the end or the beginning of what he had decided to do? They didn’t even know whether he had motives for his premeditated acts or was just insane.

  It has to be a man, he thought. Anything else goes against all common sense. Women seldom commit murder. Least of all well-planned murders. Ruthless and calculated acts of violence. It has to be a man, or maybe more than one. And we’re never going to solve this case unless we find the connection between the victims. Now there are three of them. That increases our chances. But nothing is certain, nothing is going to reveal itself to us.

  He leaned his cheek against the car window. The landscape was brown with a tinge of grey, but the grass was still green. There was a lone tractor working out in a field.

  Wallander thought about the pungee pit where he had found Holger Eriksson. The tree that Gosta Runfeldt had been tied to when he was strangled. And now a man was stuffed alive into a sack and tossed into Krageholm Lake to drown.

  The only possible motive was revenge, he was sure of that. But this went beyond all reasonable proportions. What was the killer seeking revenge for? Something so horrific that it wasn’t enough simply to kill. The victims also had to be conscious of what was happening to them.

  There’s nothing random about what’s behind all this, thought Wallander. Everything has been carefully thought out and chosen. He paused at the last thought. The killer chose. Someone was chosen. Selected from what group or for what reason?

  When he reached the station he felt the need for some solitude before he sat down with his colleagues. He took the phone off the hook, pushed aside the phone messages lying on his desk, and put his feet up on a pile of memos from the national police board.

  The hardest thing to comprehend was the possibility that the murderer might be a woman. He tried to remember the times he had dealt with female criminals. It hadn’t happened often. He could recall all the cases he had ever heard about during his years as a policeman. Once, almost 15 years back, he had caught a woman who had committed murder. Later the district court changed the charge to manslaughter. She was a middle-aged woman who had killed her brother. He had persecuted and molested her ever since they were children. Finally she couldn’t take it any more and killed him with his own shotgun. She hadn’t really meant to shoot him. She just wanted to scare him, but she was a bad shot. She hit him right in the chest, and he died instantly. In all the other cases that Wallander could remember, the women who had used violence had done so on impulse and in self-defence. It involved their own husbands, or men they were having relationships with. In many cases, alcohol was part of the picture.

  Never, in all his experience, had there been a woman who planned in advance to commit a violent act. He got up and walked to the window. What was it that made him unable to let go of the idea that a woman was involved this time? He had no answer to this. He didn’t even know whether he believed it was a woman working alone or collaborating with a man. There was nothing to indicate one or the other.

  Martinsson knocked on his door and came in.

  “The list is almost ready,” he said.

  “What list is that?” Wallander asked.

  “The list of missing persons,” Martinsson replied, looking surprised.

  Wallander nodded. “Then let’s meet,” he said, motioning Martinsson ahead of him down the hall.

  When they had closed the door of the conference room behind them, his feeling of powerlessness vanished. He remained standing at the head of the table. Usually he sat down. Now he felt as if he didn’t have time for that.

  “What have we got?” he asked.

  “In Ystad no reports of anyone missing during the past few weeks,” Svedberg said. “The ones we’ve been searching for over a longer period don’t match with the man we found in Krageholm Lake. There’s a couple of teenage girls, and a boy who ran away from a refugee camp. He’s very likely on his way back to the Sudan.”

  “What about the other districts?”

  “We’ve got a couple of people in Malmo,” Hoglund said. “But they don’t match either. In one case the age might be right, but the missing person is from southern Italy.”

  They went through the bulletins from the closest districts. Wallander was aware that if necessary they might have to cover the whole country and even the rest of Scandinavia. They could only hope that the man had lived somewhere near Ystad.

  “Lund took a report late last night,” Hansson said. “A woman called to report that her husband hadn’t come home from his evening walk. The age is about right. He’s a researcher at the university.”

  “Check it out, of course.”

  “They’re sending us a photograph,” Hansson went on. “They’ll fax it over as soon as they get it.”

  Now Wallander sat down. At that moment Per Akeson came into the room. Wallander wished he hadn’t come. It was never easy to report that they were at a standstill. The investigation was stuck with its wheels deep in the mud. And now they had another victim.

  Wallander felt uncomfortable, as if he were personally responsible for the fact that they had nothing to go on. Yet he knew they had been working as hard and as steadily as they could. The detectives gathered in the room were intelligent and dedicated.

  Walland
er pushed aside his annoyance at Akeson’s presence.

  “You’re here just in time,” he said. “I was just thinking about summarising the state of the investigation.”

  “Does an investigative state even exist?” asked Akeson.

  Wallander knew he didn’t mean this as a sarcastic or critical remark. Those who didn’t know Akeson might be put off by his brusque manner. But Wallander had worked with him for so many years that he knew that what he had just said was intended to demonstrate a willingness to help if he could.

  Hamren stared at Akeson with obvious disapproval. Wallander wondered how the prosecutors in Stockholm behaved.

  “There’s always an investigative state,” Wallander replied. “We have one this time too. But it’s extremely hazy. A number of clues we were following are no longer relevant. I think we’ve reached a point where we have to go back to the beginning. What this new murder means, we can’t yet say. It’s too early for that.”

  “Is it the same killer?” Akeson asked

  “I think so,” said Wallander.

  “Why?”

  “The modus operandi. The brutality. The cruelty. Of course a sack isn’t the same thing as sharpened bamboo stakes. But you have to admit it’s a variation on a theme.”

  “What about the suspicion that a mercenary soldier might be behind all this?”

  “That led us to discover that Harald Berggren has been dead for seven years.”

  Akeson had no more questions. The door was cautiously pushed open, and a clerk handed in a picture that had arrived by fax.

  “It’s from Lund,” the girl said, and then she closed the door behind her.

  Everyone stood up and gathered around Martinsson, who stood holding the picture. Wallander gave a low whistle. There could be no doubt. It was the man they had found in Krageholm Lake.

  “Good,” he said in a low voice. “We just got a good jump on the murderer’s lead.”

  They sat down again.

  “Who is he?” Wallander asked.

  Hansson had his papers in order.

  “Eugen Blomberg, 51 years old. A research assistant at Lund University. His research has something to do with milk.”

  “Milk?” Wallander said in surprise.

  “That’s what it says. ‘The relationship between milk allergies and various intestinal diseases.’”

  “Who reported him missing?”

  “His wife. Kristina Blomberg. She lives on Siriusgatan in Lund.”

  Wallander knew they had to make the best use of their time. He wanted to make an even bigger dent in the killer’s lead.

  “Then we’ll go there,” he said, getting to his feet. “Tell our colleagues that we’ve identified him. See to it that they track down the wife so I can talk to her. There’s a detective in Lund named Birch. Kalle Birch. We know each other. Talk to him, tell him that I’m on my way.”

  “Can you really talk to her before we have a positive identification?”

  “Someone else can identify him. Someone from the university. Another milk researcher. Now we’ll have to go through all the material on Eriksson and Runfeldt again. Eugen Blomberg. Is he there somewhere? We need to get through a lot of it today.”

  Wallander turned to Akeson. “I think we could safely say that the investigative state has changed.”

  Akeson nodded, but said nothing.

  Wallander went to get his jacket and the keys to one of the squad cars. It was 2.15 p.m. when he left Ystad. He briefly considered putting on the emergency light, but decided against it. It wouldn’t get him there any faster.

  He reached Lund at about 3.30 p.m. A police car met him at the entrance to town and escorted him to Siriusgatan, in a residential neighbourhood east of the centre of town. At the entrance to the street the police car pulled over. Another car was parked there. Wallander saw Kalle Birch get out. They had met several years back at a conference of the Southern Sweden Police District held in Tylosand, outside of Halmstad. The purpose of the conference was to improve operational cooperation in the region. Wallander had participated grudgingly. Bjork, Ystad’s chief of police at the time, had ordered him to go. At the lunch he had sat next to Birch. They discovered that they shared an interest in opera. They had occasionally been in contact since then. From various sources Wallander had heard that Birch was a talented detective who sometimes suffered from deep depression, but he seemed cheerful enough today. They shook hands.

  “One of Blomberg’s colleagues is on his way to identify the body. They’ll let us know by phone.”

  “And the widow?”

  “Not yet informed. We thought that was a little premature.”

  “That’s going to make the interview more difficult,” Wallander said. “She’ll be shocked, of course.”

  “I don’t think that we can do anything about that.”

  Birch pointed to a cafe across the street. “We can wait there,” he said. “Besides, I’m hungry.”

  Wallander hadn’t eaten lunch either. They went into the cafe and had sandwiches and coffee. Wallander gave Birch a summary of the case to date.

  “It reminds me of what you were dealing with this summer,” he said when Wallander had finished.

  “Only because the murderer has killed more than one person,” Wallander said. “The method here is quite different.”

  “What’s so different about taking scalps and drowning somebody alive?”

  “I might not be able to put it into words,” Wallander said hesitantly. “But there’s still a big difference.”

  Birch let the question drop. “We sure as hell never thought about things like this when we joined the force,” he said instead.

  “I hardly remember what I imagined any more,” Wallander said.

  “I remember an old commissioner,” Birch said. “He’s been dead a long time now. Karl-Oscar Fredrick Wilhelm Sunesson. He’s practically a legend. At least here in Lund. He saw all of this coming. I remember that he used to talk to us younger detectives and warn us that everything was going to get a lot tougher. The violence would get more widespread and more brutal. He said that this was because Sweden’s prosperity was a well-camouflaged quagmire. The decay was underneath it all. He even took the time to put together demographic analyses and explain the connections between various types of crime. He was that rare sort of man who never spoke ill of anyone. He could be critical about politicians, and he could use his arguments to crush suggested changes to the police force. But he never doubted that there were good, albeit confused, intentions behind them. He used to say that good intentions that are not clothed in reason lead to greater disasters than actions built on ill will. I didn’t understand it back then. But I do now.”

  Birch could have been talking about Rydberg.

  “That still doesn’t explain what we were really thinking when we decided to join the force,” he said.

  But what Birch had in mind, Wallander never found out. The phone rang. Birch listened without saying anything.

  “It’s Eugen Blomberg. There’s absolutely no doubt about it.”

  “So let’s go in,” Wallander said.

  “If you want, you can wait until we inform his wife,” said Birch. “It’s usually rather painful.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Wallander said. “It’s better than sitting here doing nothing. Besides, it might give me an idea what kind of relationship she had with her husband.”

  They encountered a woman who was unexpectedly composed. She seemed to understand why they were standing on her doorstep at once. Wallander kept in the background as Birch told her of her husband’s death. She sat down on the edge of a chair, as if to bear the brunt of it with her feet, and nodded silently. Wallander assumed that she was about the same age as her husband, but she seemed older, as if she had aged prematurely. She was thin, her skin stretched taut across her cheekbones. Wallander studied her furtively. He didn’t think she was going to fall apart. At least not yet.

  Birch nodded to Wallander to step forward. Birch had me
rely said that they had found her husband dead in Krageholm Lake. Nothing about what had happened. This was Wallander’s job.

  “Krageholm Lake comes under the jurisdiction of the Ystad police,” said Birch. “Which is why one of my colleagues from there is with me. This is Kurt Wallander.”

  Kristina Blomberg looked up. She reminded Wallander of someone, but he couldn’t think who it was.

  “I recognise your face,” she said. “I’ve seen you in the papers.”

  “That’s quite possible,” Wallander said, sitting down on a chair across from her. Birch had taken over Wallander’s position in the background. The house was very quiet. Tastefully furnished. But quiet. It occurred to Wallander that he didn’t yet know whether they had children.

  That was his first question.

  “No,” she replied. “We don’t have any children.”

  “None from earlier marriages?”

  Wallander immediately noticed her uncertainty. She paused before answering; it was barely noticeable but he saw it.

  “No,” she said. “Not that I know of.”

  Wallander exchanged a glance with Birch before slowly pressing on.

  “When did you last see your husband?”

  “He went for a walk last night as he usually did.”

  “Do you know which way he went?”

  She shook her head. “He was often gone for more than an hour. Where he went, I have no idea.”

  “Was everything normal last night?”

  “Yes.”

  Wallander again sensed a shadow of uncertainty in her answer. He continued cautiously.

  “So he didn’t come back? What did you do then?”

  “At 2 a.m. I called the police.”

  “But didn’t you think he might have gone to see some friends?”

  “He didn’t have many friends. I called them before I contacted the police. He wasn’t with them.”

  She looked at him. Still composed. Wallander realised that he couldn’t wait any longer.

  “Your husband was found dead in Krageholm Lake. We have determined that he was murdered. I regret this very much, but I have to tell you the truth.”

  Wallander studied her face. She’s not surprised, he thought. About him being dead, or that he was murdered.