The Fifth Woman kw-6

by Henning Mankell

  “No.”

  “Has she taken any holidays abroad?”

  “We usually go somewhere once a year, in February. To Madeira, Morocco, Tunisia.”

  “Does she have any hobbies?”

  “She reads a lot, she likes to listen to music. Her hair products business takes up most of her time. She works hard.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Sometimes she plays badminton.”

  “Who with? One of the three girlfriends?”

  “With a teacher. I think her name is Carlman. But I’ve never met her.”

  Wallander didn’t know if this was important. At least it was a new name.

  “Do they work at the same school?”

  “Not any more. They did in the past, a few years ago.”

  “You don’t remember her first name?”

  “I’ve never met her.”

  “Where did they usually play?”

  “At Victoria Stadium. It’s within walking distance of her flat.”

  Birch discreetly went into the hall. Wallander knew that he would trace the woman named Carlman. It took him less than five minutes. He came back and signalled to Wallander, who stood up and went out to the hall. In the meantime Hoglund tried to clarify what Mrs Taxell really knew about her daughter’s relationship with Eugen Blomberg.

  “That was easy,” Birch said. “Annika Carlman. She’s the one who reserves and pays for the court. I have her address. It’s not far from here.”

  “Let’s go there,” Wallander said.

  He went back into the room.

  “Your daughter’s friend’s name is Annika Carlman,” he said. “She lives on Bankgatan.”

  “I’ve never heard her first name before,” Mrs Taxell said.

  “We’ll leave you two alone for a while,” Wallander went on. “We need to talk to her right away.”

  It took less than ten minutes to get there. It was 6.30 p.m. Annika Carlman lived in a turn-of-the-century block of flats. Birch picked up the security phone. A man’s voice answered, and Birch identified himself. The door opened. A door on the second floor stood open. A man stood there waiting for them. He introduced himself.

  “I’m Annika’s husband,” he said. “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing,” Birch said. “We just need to ask a few questions.”

  He invited them in. The flat was big and lavishly furnished. Somewhere in another room they could hear music and children’s voices. A moment later Annika Carlman came in. She was tall, and was dressed in gym gear.

  “These police officers want to talk to you.”

  “We need to ask some questions about Katarina Taxell,” Wallander said.

  They sat down in a room lined with books. Wallander wondered whether Annika Carlman’s husband was also a teacher.

  He got right to the point.

  “How well do you know Katarina Taxell?”

  “We played badminton together, but we didn’t socialise.”

  “But you do know that she just had a baby?”

  “We haven’t played badminton for five months for precisely that reason.”

  “Were you going to start up again?”

  “We’d agreed she would give me a call.”

  Wallander mentioned the names of Katarina’s three girlfriends.

  “I don’t know them. We just played badminton.”

  “When did you start playing?”

  “About five years ago. We were teachers at the same school.”

  “Is it really possible to play badminton regularly with someone for five years without getting to know her?”

  “Perfectly possible, yes.”

  Wallander pondered how to continue. Annika Carlman gave clear, concise answers. And yet he could feel that they were moving away from something.

  “You never saw her together with anyone else?”

  “Man or woman?”

  “Let’s start with a man.”

  “No.”

  “Not even when you were working together?”

  “She kept to herself. There was one teacher who seemed interested in her. She acted very cold towards him, you might almost say hostile. But she was good with the students. She was smart. A stubborn and smart teacher.”

  “Did you ever see her with a woman?”

  Wallander had given up hope in the value of that question before he even asked it. But he had resigned himself too soon.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,” she replied. “About three years ago.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know her name. But I know what she does. It was a very peculiar situation.”

  “What does she do?”

  “What she’s doing now, I don’t know. But back in those days she was a waitress in a dining car on a train.”

  Wallander frowned.

  “You ran into Katarina Taxell on a train?”

  “I just happened to catch sight of her in town with another woman. I was walking on the other side of the street. We didn’t even say hello to each other. A few days later I took the train to Stockholm. I went into the dining car somewhere after Alvesta. When I was paying the bill I recognised the woman working there. I’d seen her with Katarina.”

  “You say you don’t know what her name is?”

  “No.”

  “But you mentioned this to Katarina later on?”

  “Actually, I didn’t. I forgot all about it. Is it important?”

  Wallander suddenly thought about the timetable he had found in Taxell’s desk.

  “Maybe. What day was it? Which train?”

  “How would I remember that?” she said in surprise. “It was three years ago.”

  “Do you happen to have an old calendar? We’d like you to try and remember.”

  Her husband, who had been sitting quietly and listening, stood up.

  “I’ll get the calendar,” he said. “Was it 1991 or 1992?”

  She thought for a moment.

  “1991. In February or March.”

  Several minutes passed as they waited tensely. The music from somewhere in the flat had been replaced by sounds from a TV. The husband came back and handed her an old black calendar. She leafed through a few months. Then she found the right place.

  “I went to Stockholm on 19 February 1991. On a train that left at 7.12 a.m. Three days later I came back. I’d been to see my sister.”

  “You didn’t see this woman on your return trip?”

  “I’ve haven’t seen her since.”

  “But you’re positive that it was the same woman as the one you’d seen on the street here in Lund with Katarina?”

  “Yes.”

  Wallander regarded her thoughtfully.

  “There’s nothing else you think might be important for us?”

  She shook her head.

  “I realise how little I know about Katarina. But she’s a good badminton player.”

  “How would you describe her as a person?”

  “That’s hard. Maybe that describes her right there. A hard-to-describe person. She’s temperamental. She can be depressed. But that time I saw her on the street with the waitress she was happy and laughing.”

  “There’s nothing else you think might be important?”

  Wallander saw that she was making an effort to be helpful.

  “I think she misses her father,” she said after a moment.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “It’s just a feeling I got. Something to do with the way she acted towards men who were old enough to be her father.”

  “How did she act?”

  “She’d stop behaving naturally, as if unsure of herself.”

  Wallander thought about Katarina’s father, who had died when she was still young. He also wondered if what Annika Carlman had said could explain her relationship with Eugen Blomberg.

  He looked at her again. “Anything else?”

  “No.”

  Wallander nodded to Birch and stood up.

  “We won
’t bother you any more,” he said.

  “I’m curious, of course,” she said. “Why are the police asking questions if nothing has happened?”

  “A lot has happened,” Wallander said. “But not to Katarina. I’m afraid that’s all the answer I can give you.”

  They left the flat.

  “We have to find this waitress,” Wallander said.

  “Swedish Railways must have lists of employees,” Birch said. “But I wonder if we’re going to find out anything more tonight. It was three years ago, after all.”

  “We have to try,” Wallander said. “Of course I can’t ask you to do it. We can handle it from Ystad.”

  “You have enough to do,” Birch replied. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Wallander could tell that Birch was sincere. It was no sacrifice.

  They drove back to Hedwig Taxell’s house. Birch dropped Wallander off and continued on to the police station to start looking for the waitress. Wallander wondered whether it was an impossible task.

  Just as he rang the bell, his phone rang. It was Martinsson. Wallander could hear from his voice that he was managing to pull himself out of his depression. It was going better than Wallander had dared hope.

  “How are things?” Martinsson asked. “Are you still in Lund?”

  “We’re trying to trace a waitress who works for Swedish Railways,” Wallander replied.

  Martinsson was wise enough not to ask any further questions.

  “A lot’s been going on here,” he said. “Svedberg managed to get hold of the person who printed Eriksson’s poetry books. He was a very old man, but his mind was sharp. And he didn’t mind telling us what he thought of Eriksson. Apparently he had trouble getting paid for his work.”

  “Did he tell us anything new?”

  “Eriksson seems to have made regular trips to Poland since the war. He took advantage of the poverty there to buy women. When he came home, he would boast about his conquests. That old printer really told us what he thought of him.”

  Wallander remembered what Sven Tyren had told him during one of their first conversations. Now it had been confirmed. So Krista Haberman wasn’t the only Polish woman in Eriksson’s life.

  “Svedberg wondered whether it would be worth contacting the Polish police,” Martinsson said.

  “Maybe,” Wallander replied. “But for the time being, I think we’ll wait on that.”

  “There’s more,” Martinsson said. “I’ll let you talk to Hansson now.”

  Hansson came on the phone.

  “I think I have a clear picture of who worked Eriksson’s land,” he said. “It all seems to be distinguished by one thing.”

  “What?”

  “An unsolved crime. If I can believe my source, Eriksson had an incredible ability to make enemies. You’d think that his life’s great passion was to make new enemies.”

  “The fields,” Wallander said impatiently.

  He could hear how Hansson’s voice changed when he replied. He sounded more serious.

  “The ditch,” Hansson said. “Where we found Eriksson hanging on the stakes.”

  “What about it?”

  “It was dug some years back. It wasn’t there to start with. Nobody really understood why Eriksson needed to put it in. It wasn’t necessary for drainage. The mud was shovelled out, and made the hill taller where the tower is.”

  “A ditch isn’t what I had in mind,” Wallander said. “It doesn’t seem believable that it could have anything to do with a grave.”

  “That was my first thought too,” Hansson said. “But then I heard something that made me change my mind.”

  Wallander held his breath.

  “The ditch was dug in 1967. The farmer I talked to was sure about that. It was dug in the late autumn of 1967.”

  “So that means the ditch was dug about the same time that Krista Haberman disappeared.”

  “My farmer was even more specific. He was certain that the ditch was dug at the end of October. He remembered because of a wedding in Lodinge on the last day of October that year. The times match exactly. Krista Haberman goes on a car ride from Svenstavik. He kills her. Buries her. A ditch appears. A ditch that wasn’t really necessary.”

  “Good,” Wallander said. “This means something.”

  “If she’s there, then I know where we should start searching,” Hansson said. “The farmer claimed that they started digging the ditch just southeast of the hill. Eriksson had rented a digger. The first few days he did the digging himself, then he let others finish.”

  “Then that’s where we’ll start digging,” Wallander said, noticing his feeling of unease growing. “We’ll start tomorrow,” he went on. “I want you to make all the preparations.”

  “It’s going to be impossible to keep this secret,” Hansson said.

  “We have to try, at least,” Wallander said. “I want you to talk to Chief Holgersson about it. And Per Akeson, and the others.”

  “There’s one thing that puzzles me,” Hansson said hesitantly. “If we do find her, what does it really prove? That Holger Eriksson killed her? We can assume so, even if we can never prove a dead man’s guilt. But what will it really mean for the murder investigation we’re doing right now?”

  It was a reasonable question.

  “Most of all it’ll tell us that we’re on the right track,” Wallander said. “That the motive connecting these murders is revenge.”

  “And you still think it’s a woman behind this?”

  “Yes,” replied Wallander. “Now more than ever.”

  When the conversation was over, Wallander remained standing outside in the autumn night. The sky was cloudless. A faint breeze blew on his face. They were slowly approaching something — the centre he had spent exactly one month searching for. He still didn’t know what they would find there.

  The woman he tried to visualise kept slipping away, yet at the same time he sensed that in some way he might be able to understand her.

  Cautiously she opened the door to where they were sleeping. The child lay in the bassinet she had bought that day. Katarina Taxell was curled up in a foetal position on the edge of the bed. She stood still and looked at them. It was as if she were looking at herself. Or maybe it was her sister lying in the crib.

  Suddenly she couldn’t see. She was completely surrounded by blood. It’s not just a child who is born in blood. Life itself had its source in the blood that ran out when the skin was cut. Blood that remembered the arteries it had once flowed through. She could see it clearly. Her mother screaming and the man standing over her as she lay on a table with her legs spread. Even though it was 40 years ago, time came rushing towards her from the past. All her life she had tried to escape, but she couldn’t. The memories always caught up with her. But she knew that she no longer needed to fear these memories. Now that her mother was dead, and she was free to do what she wanted, what she had to do to keep the memories at bay.

  The feeling of dizziness passed as quickly as it had come. Cautiously she approached the bed and looked at the sleeping child. It wasn’t her sister. This child already had a face. Her sister hadn’t lived long enough to have anything. This was Katarina’s newborn baby. Not her mother’s. Katarina’s child, who would never have to be tormented, haunted by memories.

  She felt quite calm again. The images were gone. What she was doing was right. She was preventing people from being tormented as she had been. She had forced those men who had committed violent acts that had gone unpunished, to take the harshest of all roads. Or so she imagined. A man whose life was taken by a woman would never be able to understand what had happened to him.

  It was quiet. That was the most important thing. It was the right thing for her to go and get the woman and child. Speak calmly, listen, and tell her that everything that had happened was for the best. Eugen Blomberg had drowned. What it said in the papers about a sack was rumour and exaggeration. Eugen Blomberg was gone. Whether he had stumbled or tripped and then drowned, nobody was to bla
me. Fate had decided. And fate was just. That’s what she had repeated over and over again, and it seemed as if Katarina was now starting to accept it.

  Yesterday she’d had to tell the women that they would have to miss their meeting this week. She didn’t like interrupting her timetable. It created disorder and made it hard for her to sleep. But it was necessary. It wasn’t possible to plan everything.

  As long as Katarina and her child stayed with her, she would live at the house in Vollsjo. She had brought along only the essentials from her flat in Ystad: her uniforms and the small box in which she kept her slips of paper and the book of names. Now that Katarina and her child were asleep, she didn’t have to wait any longer. She dumped the slips of paper onto the top of the baking oven, shuffled them, and then began picking them up.

  The ninth slip she unfolded had the black cross on it. She opened the ledger and slowly scanned the list, stopped at number 9 and read the name. Tore Grunden. She stood motionless and stared straight ahead. His picture slowly materialised. First as a vague shadow, a few barely visible contours. Then a face, an identity. Now she remembered him. Who he was, and what he had done.

  It was more than ten years ago. She was working at the hospital in Malmo. One evening right before Christmas she was working in the casualty ward. The woman in the ambulance was dead on arrival. She had died in a car accident. Her husband had come with her. He was upset, and yet composed, and she was immediately suspicious. She had seen it so many times. Since the woman was dead, there was nothing they could do. But she had taken one of the policemen aside and asked him what happened. It was a tragic accident. Her husband had backed out of the garage without noticing that she was standing behind the car. He had run over her, and her head was crushed under one of the back wheels of the car. It was an accident that shouldn’t have happened. In a moment when she wasn’t being observed, she had pulled the sheet away and looked at the dead woman. She wasn’t a doctor, but she was convinced that the woman had been run over more than once. Later she started investigating. The woman who now lay dead on the stretcher had been admitted to the hospital several times before. Once she had fallen from a ladder. Another time she hit her head hard on a cement floor when she tripped in the basement.

  She wrote an anonymous letter to the police. She talked to the doctors who examined the body. But nothing happened. The man was given a fine, or maybe a suspended sentence, for gross negligence. Nothing else happened. Now everything would be made right again. Everything except the life of the dead woman. She couldn’t bring her back.