The Fifth Woman kw-6

by Henning Mankell

  “We can try,” Birch muttered to himself.

  He took a running start and threw himself against the door. It was ripped off its hinges.

  “You know what it means to break the regulations,” Wallander said without irony.

  They went inside. The hall between a row of locked storage rooms led to a door at the end. Birch opened it. They were at the bottom of some stairs leading up to the street.

  “So she got out the back way,” he said. “And nobody even took the trouble to see if there was one.”

  “She might still be in the flat,” Wallander said.

  Birch understood.

  “Suicide?”

  “I doubt it. But we have to go in. And we don’t have time to wait for a locksmith.”

  “I’m pretty good at picking locks,” Birch said. “I’ll just have to get some tools.”

  When he came back he was out of breath. In the meantime Wallander had gone back to Katarina Taxell’s door and was ringing the bell. An elderly man next door came out and asked what was going on. Wallander got angry. He took out his badge and held it right up to the man’s face.

  “We’d appreciate it if you’d shut your door,” he said. “Now. And keep it shut until we tell you.”

  The man retreated. Wallander heard him putting on the safety chain.

  Birch picked the lock in less than five minutes. They went in. The flat was empty. Taxell had taken her baby with her. Birch shook his head.

  “Somebody’s going to answer for this,” he said.

  They went through the flat. Wallander got the feeling that she had left in a big hurry. He stopped in front of a baby buggy in the kitchen.

  “She must have been picked up by car,” he said. “There’s a petrol station across the street. Maybe someone there saw a woman with a baby leave the building.”

  Birch left to find out. Wallander went through the flat one more time. He tried to imagine what had happened. Why does a woman leave her flat with a newborn baby? Taking the back way meant that she wanted to leave in secret. It also meant that she knew the building was being watched.

  She or someone else, Wallander thought. Someone might have seen the surveillance from outside and then called her to arrange her escape. He sat down on a chair in the kitchen. There was one more question he needed to consider. Were Katarina Taxell and her baby in danger? Or had their flight from the flat been voluntary? Someone would have noticed if she had put up a struggle, he thought. So she must have left of her own volition. There was only one reason for that. She didn’t want to answer questions from the police.

  He stood up and went over to the window. Birch was talking with one of the attendants at the petrol station. Then the phone rang. Wallander gave a start. He went into the living room. It rang again. He picked up the receiver.

  “Katarina?” asked a woman’s voice.

  “She’s not here,” he said. “Who’s calling?”

  “Who are you?” asked the woman. “I’m Katarina’s mother.”

  “My name is Kurt Wallander. I’m a police officer. Nothing has happened. But Katarina isn’t here. And her baby is gone too.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “It seems strange, but she isn’t here. Maybe you have some idea where she might have gone.”

  “She wouldn’t have left without telling me.”

  Wallander made a quick decision.

  “It would be good if you could come over here. I understand you don’t live far away.”

  “It’ll take me less than ten minutes,” she replied. “What’s happened?”

  He could hear the fear in her voice.

  “I’m sure there’s an explanation. We can talk about it when you get here.”

  He heard Birch coming in the door as he hung up.

  “We’re in luck,” Birch said. “I talked to a man who works at the petrol station. A man who keeps his eyes opened.”

  He had made some notes on a piece of paper spotted with oil.

  “A red Golf stopped here this morning, sometime between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. A woman came out the back door of the building. She was carrying a baby. They got into the car.”

  Wallander felt the tension rising. “Did he notice who was driving?”

  “The driver didn’t get out of the car.”

  “So he doesn’t know whether it was a man or woman?”

  “I asked him. He gave an interesting answer. He said the car drove off as if a man was behind the wheel.”

  Wallander was surprised. “How did he figure that out?”

  “Because the car started with a roar and tore off. Women seldom drive that way.”

  “Did he notice anything else?”

  “No. But maybe he can remember more with a little help. As I said, he seemed very observant.”

  Wallander told him that Taxell’s mother was on her way over. Then they stood in silence.

  “What do you think has happened here?” Birch asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think she’s in danger?”

  “I don’t think so, but I could be wrong.”

  They went into the living room. There was a baby’s sock on the floor. Wallander looked around the room. Birch followed his gaze.

  “There’s a solution somewhere here,” Wallander said. “There’s something in this flat that will lead us to the woman we’re looking for. When we find her, we’ll also find Katarina Taxell. There’s something here that will tell us which way to turn. We’re going to find it if we have to tear up the floorboards.”

  Birch said nothing.

  They heard the door lock click. So she had her own key. Katarina Taxell’s mother walked into the room.

  CHAPTER 31

  Walland stayed in Lund for the rest of the day. With every hour that passed he grew more certain that they would find who had murdered the three men through Katarina Taxell. They were looking for a woman who was beyond all doubt deeply involved in some way. But they didn’t know whether she was acting alone, or what her motive was.

  The talk with Katarina Taxell’s mother had got them nowhere. She started rushing hysterically around the flat, looking for her missing daughter and grandchild. Finally she became so agitated that they had to get a doctor to see her. Wallander was convinced by then that she didn’t know where her daughter had gone. The few women friends she had who her mother thought might have come to get her were contacted at once. Each seemed puzzled. But Wallander didn’t trust what he heard over the phone. At his request, Birch followed closely in his tracks and called on each person Wallander had spoken to.

  Wallander went downstairs and across the street to the petrol station. He had asked the attendant, Jonas Hader, to repeat his account of what he had seen. It was like meeting the perfect witness. Hader seemed to look at the world around him as if his observations might at any time be transformed into crucial testimony.

  The red Golf had stopped outside the building at the same time as a lorry carrying newspapers had left the petrol station. They got hold of the driver, who was positive that he had left the petrol station at 9.30 a.m. sharp. Hader had noticed lots of details, including a big sticker on the rear window of the car, but it was too far away for him to see what it was. He insisted that the car had roared off, that it was driven in what he considered a masculine way. The only thing he hadn’t seen was the driver. It was raining, and the windscreen wipers were going. He couldn’t have seen anything even if he’d tried. On the other hand, he was convinced that Taxell was wearing a light green coat, that she’d had a big sports bag, and that the child was wrapped in a blue blanket. She came out the door just as the car drew up. The back door was opened from the inside and she put the child in and then put her bag in the boot. Then she opened the back door on the other side and climbed into the car. The driver gunned the engine before Taxell had even closed her door. Hader couldn’t catch the licence-plate number, although Wallander had a feeling that he had tried. He had never seen a car stop at the back door before.r />
  Wallander returned to the building with a feeling that he’d had something confirmed, although he wasn’t sure what it was. It seemed to have been a hurried escape, but how long had it been planned? And why?

  In the meantime Birch had talked to the officers who had taken turns keeping the building under surveillance. Wallander specifically asked them to say whether they had seen a woman near the building who had come and gone, or showed up more than once. But unlike Jonas Hader, the officers had made few observations. They had concentrated on the front door. Wallander insisted that they identify every person they noticed. Since 14 families lived in the building, the whole afternoon had been filled with policemen checking up on the residents.

  This was how Birch found someone who might have seen something important. It was a man who lived two floors above Katarina Taxell. He was a retired musician, and according to Birch he described his life as “standing for hours at the window, staring out at the rain, and hearing in my mind music I will never play again”. That morning he’d seen a woman on the other side of the square. A woman on foot, who had suddenly stopped, took several steps back, and then stood motionless and studied the building, before turning around and disappearing. When Birch brought this news, Wallander immediately thought that this could be the woman they were looking for. Someone had come, and noticed the car parked right outside the door. Someone had come to visit Katarina Taxell. In the same way that she’d had a visitor in the hospital.

  Wallander became energetic and determined. He asked Birch to contact Taxell’s friends again and ask if any of them had been on their way to visit her that morning. The answer was unequivocal. No-one had. Birch had tried to coax a description of the woman out of the musician, but the only thing that he could say with certainty was that it was a woman. It had been around 8 a.m. This wasn’t confirmed, though, because the three clocks in his flat all showed different times.

  Wallander’s energy on that day was inexhaustible. He sent Birch out on various tasks. Birch didn’t seem at all put out that Wallander was giving him orders as if to a subordinate. Meanwhile Wallander began a methodical search of Taxell’s flat. The first thing he asked Birch was whether he could have his forensic technicians secure fingerprints.

  He kept in constant contact with Ystad. On four separate occasions he talked to Nyberg. Ylva Brink had smelled the name tag holder, which still had a faint trace of perfume. It might have been the same scent she noticed on that night in the maternity ward, but she wasn’t positive.

  Twice during the day he talked to Martinsson at home. Terese was still scared and depressed, of course, and Martinsson was determined to quit the force. But Wallander managed to get him to promise to wait at least until the next day before he wrote his letter of resignation. Wallander gave him a detailed account of what had happened. He was sure that Martinsson was listening, although he made few comments. But Wallander knew that he had to keep Martinsson involved with the investigation. He didn’t want to risk having him make a decision he would later regret. He talked to Chief Holgersson several times. Hansson and Hoglund had taken firm action at the school where Terese was attacked. They interviewed the three boys who were involved, one after the other. They had been in contact with the parents and the teachers. According to Hoglund, Hansson had done an excellent job when all the students had been assembled and told about what happened. The students were upset, and she didn’t think it would happen again.

  Eskil Bengtsson and the other men had been released, but Akeson was going to prosecute. Maybe what had happened to Martinsson’s daughter would make some people reconsider, Hoglund said, but Wallander had his doubts. They would have to use a great deal of energy in the future to combat the private militias.

  The most important news of the day came from Hamren, who had taken over some of Hansson’s assignments. He had managed to locate Gote Tandvall, and called Wallander at once.

  “He has an antique shop in Simrishamn,” Hamren said. “He also travels around and buys antiques, which he exports to Norway and other places.”

  “Is that legal?”

  “I don’t think it is strictly illegal,” Hamren replied. “The prices are probably higher there. Then of course it depends on what kind of antiques they are.”

  “I want you to pay him a visit,” Wallander said. “Go to Simrishamn. The thing we need to know is whether a relationship really existed between Holger Eriksson and Krista Haberman. And Tandvall might have other information for us.”

  Hamren called back three hours later. He was in his car outside Simrishamn. He had met Tandvall. Wallander waited tensely.

  “Tandvall is an extremely precise individual,” Hamren said. “He seems to have a complicated sort of memory. Some things he couldn’t remember at all, but on other matters he was crystal clear.”

  “Krista Haberman?”

  “He remembered her. I got a feeling that she must have been rather beautiful. He was positive that Eriksson had met her on a couple of occasions. He remembered them watching returning geese one morning on the pier at Falsterbo. Or maybe it was cranes. On that point he was unclear.”

  “Is he a bird-watcher too?”

  “He was dragged along by his father.”

  “So now we know the most important thing,” Wallander said.

  “It does look as if it all fits. Krista Haberman, Holger Eriksson.”

  Wallander felt a sudden wave of disgust. It came to him with horrifying clarity what he was now starting to believe.

  “I want you to return to Ystad,” he said. “Go through all the material on Haberman’s actual disappearance. When and where was she last seen? I want you to put together a summary of that part of the investigation.”

  “It sounds as though you have something in mind,” Hamren said.

  “She disappeared,” Wallander said. “She was never found. What does that indicate?”

  “That she’s dead.”

  “More than that. Don’t forget that we’re skirting the edges of an investigation in which both men and women are subjected to the most brutal violence imaginable.”

  “Do you believe that she was murdered?”

  “Hansson gave me a summary of the investigation. The possibility of murder has been there from the start, but since there was nothing to suggest that this had happened, it wasn’t allowed to outweigh other possible explanations for her disappearance. That’s correct police procedure. No hasty conclusions.”

  “You think that Eriksson killed her?”

  Wallander could hear that this idea was occurring to Hamren for the first time.

  “I am not certain of it,” said Wallander. “But it’s a possibility that we can’t ignore.”

  Wallander left Katarina Taxell’s flat. He had to have something to eat. He found a pizzeria close by. He ate too fast and immediately got a stomach ache.

  Since there was nothing to indicate that the series of killings was over, they were working against time. And they didn’t know how much time they had. He reminded himself that Martinsson had promised to put together a timetable of everything that had happened so far. He was supposed to have done that on the day that Terese was attacked. On his way back to Taxell’s flat, Wallander decided it couldn’t wait. He stopped in a bus shelter and called Ystad. He was in luck. Hoglund was there. She had already talked to Hamren and knew that they had positive confirmation that Krista Haberman and Holger Eriksson had met. Wallander asked her to make the timetable of events.

  “I have no idea whether it’s important,” he said. “But we know too little about how this woman moves around. Maybe the geographical centre will become clear if we make a timetable.”

  “Now you’re saying ‘she’,” Hoglund said.

  “Yes, I am. But we don’t know if she’s alone. We also don’t know what role she plays.”

  “What do you think has happened to Katarina Taxell?”

  “She’s run away, in a hurry, when she discovered that the building was being watched. She’s run away because sh
e has something to hide.”

  “Is it possible that she killed Blomberg?”

  “Taxell is a link in the chain. She doesn’t represent a beginning or an end. I can’t imagine her killing anyone. She presumably belongs to the group of women who have been victims of abuse.”

  “Was she abused too? I didn’t know that.” Hoglund sounded genuinely surprised.

  “She might not have been beaten up or cut with a knife,” Wallander said. “But I suspect that she’s been victimised in some other way.”

  “Psychologically?”

  “Something like that.”

  “By Blomberg?”

  “Yes.”

  “But she still had his child? If what you think about the father is true.”

  “I described to you the way she held her baby. But of course there are still a lot of holes,” Wallander admitted. “Police work is a question of piecing together tentative solutions. We have to make the gaps speak and the pieces tell us about things that have hidden meanings. We have to try to see through the events, turn them on their heads in order to set them on their feet.”

  “Nobody at the police academy ever talked about this. Weren’t you invited to give a lecture there?”

  “Never,” Wallander said. “I can’t give lectures.”

  “That’s exactly what you can do,” she replied. “You just refuse to admit it. And besides, I think you’d actually enjoy doing it.”

  “That’s neither here nor there,” Wallander said.

  Afterwards he thought about what she had said. Did he really want to speak to trainee police officers? In the past he was convinced that his reluctance was genuine. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  He left the bus shelter and hurried on through the rain. It was starting to get windy. Back at Taxell’s flat, he continued to search methodically. In a box in the back of a cupboard he found a large number of diaries. She had started the first one when she was twelve. Wallander noticed with surprise that it had a beautiful orchid on the cover. She had kept on writing the diaries through her teenage years and into adulthood. The last diary he found was from 1993. But there were no entries after September. He kept searching, without finding another. But he was certain that it existed. He enlisted the help of Birch, who had finished interviewing the other residents in the building.