The Fifth Woman kw-6

by Henning Mankell

  “In the spring of 1991. I can’t be any more specific than that.”

  “And you worked together?”

  “Not always. But often.”

  “And you also spent time together when you were off?”

  “Sometimes. But we weren’t close friends. We had fun. That’s all.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “We drifted apart when she stopped waitressing. It wasn’t a close friendship.”

  Wallander saw that she was telling the truth. Her wariness was gone.

  “Did Katarina have a steady boyfriend during that time?”

  “I actually don’t know,” she replied.

  “If you worked together and also spent time together, wouldn’t you have known that?”

  “I don’t remember her ever mentioning anyone.”

  “And you never saw her with any men?”

  “Never.”

  “Did she have any girlfriends she spent time with?”

  Margareta Nystedt thought for a moment. Then she gave Wallander three names. The same names Wallander already had.

  “No-one else?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “Have you ever heard the name Eugen Blomberg before?”

  She thought about it.

  “Wasn’t he the man who was murdered?”

  “That’s right. Can you remember Katarina ever talking about him?”

  She suddenly gave him a serious look.

  “Was she the one who did it?”

  Wallander pounced on her question.

  “Do you think she could have killed anyone?”

  “No. Katarina was a very gentle person.”

  “You went back and forth between Malmo and Stockholm,” he said. “I’m sure you had a lot of work to do, but you must have talked to each other. Are you positive she never mentioned any other girlfriend? It’s important.”

  “No,” she said. “I can’t remember anyone.”

  At that moment Wallander noticed her hesitate for a split second. She saw that he had noticed.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “What?”

  “It must have been just before she quit. I’d been sick for a week with the flu. When I came back she was different.”

  Wallander was on tenterhooks now. Birch had also noticed that something was up.

  “Different in what way?”

  “I don’t know how to explain it. Her mood seemed to swing between gloom and exhilaration. She had changed.”

  “Try to describe the change. This could be crucial.”

  “Usually when we didn’t have anything to do we would sit in the little kitchen in the restaurant car. We talked and looked through magazines. But when I came back we didn’t do that any more.”

  “What happened instead?”

  “She left.”

  Wallander waited for her to go on. But she didn’t.

  “She left the dining car? She couldn’t very well have left the train. What did she say she was going to do?”

  “She didn’t say anything.”

  “But you must have asked her. She was different? She didn’t sit and talk any more?”

  “Maybe I asked. I don’t remember. But she didn’t say anything. She just left.”

  “Did this always happen?”

  “No. Just before she quit she was different. She seemed completely closed off.”

  “Do you think she was meeting someone on the train? A passenger who was on board each time? It sounds strange.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Wallander had no more questions. He looked at Birch, who had nothing more to add either.

  The hydrofoil was just about to leave the harbour.

  “You can have a break now,” Wallander said. “I want you to contact me if you think of anything else.”

  He wrote his name and phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to her.

  She stood up and left.

  “Who would meet Katarina on a train?” Birch asked. “A passenger who travels back and forth between Malmo and Stockholm? Besides, they can’t be serving all the time on the same train. That doesn’t sound logical.”

  Wallander was only half listening to what Birch said. An idea had occurred to him that he didn’t want to lose. It couldn’t be a passenger. So it had to be someone else who was on the train for the same reason she was.

  Wallander looked at Birch.

  “Who works on a train?” he asked.

  “I assume there’s an engine driver.”

  “Who else?”

  “Conductors. One or more.”

  Wallander nodded. He thought about what Hoglund had discovered. The faint glimmer of a pattern. A person who had irregular but recurring days off. Like people who work on trains. And then there was the timetable in the secret compartment. He stood up.

  “I think we’ll go back and see Bergstrand,” he said.

  “Are you looking for more waitresses?”

  Wallander didn’t reply. He was already on his way out of the terminal building.

  Bergstrand did not look at all happy to see Wallander and Birch again. Wallander moved fast, practically shoving him through the door to his office.

  “During the same time period,” he said. “The spring of 1991, there was a woman named Katarina Taxell working for you. I want you to get out all the documents on conductors and engine drivers who worked the shifts when Katarina Taxell was working. I’m especially interested in a week during the spring of 1991 when Margareta Nystedt called in sick. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “You can’t be serious,” Bergstrand said. “It’s an impossible job to piece together all that information. It’ll take months.”

  “Let’s say you have a couple of hours,” Wallander replied in a friendly voice. “If necessary, I’ll ask the national police commissioner to call up his colleague, the general manager of Swedish Railways. And I’ll ask him to complain about the lack of cooperation by an employee in Malmo named Karl-Henrik Bergstrand.”

  Bergstrand smiled grimly. “So let’s do the impossible,” he said. “But it’s going to take hours.”

  “If you work as fast as you can, then you can have as long as you need,” Wallander replied.

  “You can spend the night in one of our dormitory rooms at the station,” said Bergstrand. “Or at the Hotel Prize, with which we have an agreement.”

  “No thanks,” Wallander said. “When you have the information I’ve asked for, send it to me by fax at the police station in Ystad.”

  “So you think there is someone else who worked for Swedish Railways back then?” Birch asked.

  “There has to be. There’s no other reasonable explanation.”

  Birch put on his knitted cap. “That means we wait.”

  “You in Lund and me in Ystad. Keep monitoring Hedwig Taxell’s phone. Katarina might call again.”

  They parted outside the station building. Wallander got into his car and drove through the city. He wondered whether he had reached the innermost Chinese box. What would he find inside?

  He turned into a petrol station right before the last roundabout on the road to Ystad. He filled up the car and went inside to pay. When he came out he heard his phone ringing. He yanked open the door and grabbed the phone. It was Hansson.

  “Where are you?” Hansson asked.

  “On my way to Ystad.”

  “I think you’d better come out here.”

  Wallander gave a start. He almost dropped the phone.

  “Did you find her?”

  “I think so.”

  Wallander drove straight to Lodinge.

  The wind had picked up and shifted direction until it was blowing from the north.

  CHAPTER 35

  They had found a thighbone. That was all. It took several more hours before they found any more skeletal remains. There was a cold, blustery wind blowing that day, a wind that cut right through their clothes and magnified the dreariness and horror of the situation.


  The femur lay on a plastic sheet. They had dug up an area no larger than 20 square metres, and were surprisingly close to the surface when a spade had struck the bone.

  A doctor came and examined it. Naturally he couldn’t say anything except that it was human. But Wallander didn’t need any additional confirmation. In his mind there was no doubt that it was part of Krista Haberman’s remains. They had to keep digging. Maybe they would find the rest of her skeleton, and maybe then they could determine how she had been killed.

  Wallander felt tired and melancholy on that endless afternoon. It didn’t help that he had been right. It was as though he was looking straight into a terrible story that he would rather not deal with. The whole time he was waiting tensely for what Karl-Henrik Bergstrand could tell them. He spent two long hours out in the mud with Hansson and the other policemen doing the excavation, then returned to the station, after explaining to Hansson what had happened in Malmo.

  When he got to the police station he gathered all the colleagues he could find and repeated his account of what had happened. Now all they had to do was wait for the paper to start coming out of the fax machine. While they were sitting in the conference room, Hansson called to say they had also found a shinbone. The discomfort around the table was palpable. They were sitting there waiting for a skull to appear in the mud.

  It was a long afternoon. The first autumn storm was building over Skane. Leaves whirled across the car park outside the station. They stayed in the conference room even though there was nothing for them to discuss as a group. All of them had many other assignments waiting on their desks, but Wallander thought that what they needed most right now was to gather their strength. If the information coming from Malmo gave them the breakthrough that he was hoping for, then they would have to do a lot in a very short space of time. That’s why they were slumped in their chairs around the conference table, resting.

  Birch called and told him that Hedwig Taxell had never heard of Margareta Nystedt. She also said that she couldn’t understand how she’d managed to forget that her daughter had worked as a waitress on the trains for a while. Birch thought she was telling the truth.

  Martinsson kept leaving the room to call home, allowing Wallander to check with Hoglund. She thought that everything was already going much better for Terese. Martinsson had said no more about wanting to resign. Even that discussion had to be put on hold for the time being. Investigating serious crimes meant putting the rest of one’s life on hold.

  At 4 p.m. Hansson called to say they had found a middle finger. Soon after that he called again The skull had been uncovered. Wallander asked him if he wanted to be relieved, but he said he might as well stay.

  An icy ripple of revulsion passed through the conference room when Wallander announced this latest news. Svedberg quickly put down the half-eaten sandwich he had in his hand.

  Wallander had been through this before. A skeleton meant little without the skull. Only then was it possible to imagine the person who had once existed. In this mood of weary anticipation, the members of the team sat around the table like little isolated islands. Conversations were started from time to time. Someone would ask a question. An answer was given, something was clarified, and then silence would fall again.

  Svedberg brought up Svenstavik.

  “Eriksson must have been a strange man. First he entices a Polish woman to come with him down to Skane. God knows what he promised her. Marriage? Wealth? The chance to be a car-dealer’s princess? Then he kills her almost at once. But when he feels his own death approaching, he buys a letter of indulgence by bequeathing money to the church up there in Jamtland.”

  “I’ve read his poems,” Martinsson said. “You can’t deny that he occasionally shows some sensitivity.”

  “For animals,” Hoglund said. “For birds. But not for human beings.”

  Wallander remembered the abandoned kennel. He wondered how long it had been empty. Hamren grabbed a phone and got hold of Sven Tyren and they got the answer. Eriksson’s last dog was found dead in the kennel one morning a few weeks before Eriksson was murdered. Tyren had been told this by his wife, who in turn had heard it from the postwoman. What the dog died of he didn’t know, but it was pretty old. Wallander guessed that someone must have killed the dog so it wouldn’t bark. And that person was the one they were looking for. They had come up with one more explanation. But they still lacked an overall framework. Nothing had been fully clarified yet.

  At 4.30 p.m. Wallander called Malmo. Bergstrand came to the phone. They would be able to fax over the names and other information Wallander had requested shortly.

  The waiting continued. A reporter called and asked what they were digging for at Eriksson’s farm. Wallander told him that the enquiry was progressing, but that he wasn’t able to provide details at this stage. He was as friendly as possible. Chief Holgersson sat with them for most of the time. She also drove out to Lodinge with Akeson. Unlike their former chief, Bjork, she didn’t say much. The two of them were quite different. Bjork would have taken the opportunity to complain about the latest memo from the national police board, managing to connect it with the investigation that was under way. Lisa Holgersson was different. Wallander decided that they were both good in their own ways.

  Hamren was doing a crossword, Svedberg was searching for any remaining hairs on his scalp, and Hoglund was sitting with her eyes closed. Now and then Wallander got up and took a walk down the hall. He was very tired. He wondered why Katarina Taxell hadn’t made contact. Should they start to search for her? He was afraid they would scare off the woman who had come to get her. He heard the phone ringing in the conference room, and hurried back to stand in the door. Svedberg had picked it up.

  Wallander mouthed the question “Malmo?” Svedberg shook his head. It was Hansson again.

  “A rib this time,” Svedberg said when he’d hung up. “Does he have to call here every time they find a bone?”

  Wallander sat down at the table. The phone rang again. Svedberg picked it up. He listened briefly and then handed it to Wallander.

  “You’ll have it by fax in a few minutes,” Bergstrand said. “I think we’ve found all the information you wanted.”

  “Then you’ve done a good job,” Wallander said. “If there is any additional information I’ll call you back.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Bergstrand said. “I get the impression you aren’t the type to give up.”

  They all gathered around the fax machine. After a few minutes pages started to be transmitted. Wallander saw instantly that there were many more names than he had imagined. When the transmission was completed he made copies for everyone. Back in the conference room they studied them in silence. Wallander counted 32 names, 17 of them women. He didn’t recognise any of them. The lists of hours of service and the various combinations seemed endless. He searched for a long time before he found the week when Margareta Nystedt’s name wasn’t included. Eleven women conductors had been on duty on the days that Katarina Taxell was working as a waitress.

  For a moment Wallander felt his powerlessness return. Then he forced it aside and tapped his pen on the table.

  “There are a lot of people listed here,” he said. “We have to concentrate on the eleven female conductors. Does anyone recognise any of the names?”

  They bent their heads over the pages. No-one could remember any of the names from other parts of the investigation. Wallander missed Hansson’s presence. He was the one with the best memory. He asked one of the detectives from Malmo to make a copy and see to it that someone drove it out to him.

  “Then let’s get started,” he said when the detective left the room. “Eleven women. We have to look at every one of them. Let’s hope that somewhere we’ll find a point of connection with this investigation. We’ll divide them up. And we’ll start now. It’s going to be a long night.”

  They divided up the names. Wallander knew the hunt was on. The waiting was finally over.

  Many hours later,
when it was almost 11 p.m., Wallander started to despair again. They had got no further than eliminating two of the names from the list. One of the women had died in a car accident long before they found Eriksson’s body, and the other had already transferred to an administrative job in Malmo. Bergstrand had discovered the mistake and called Wallander at once. They were searching for points of intersection but found none. Hoglund came into Wallander’s office.

  “What should I do with this one?” she asked, shaking a paper she had in her hand.

  “What about her?”

  “Anneli Olsson, 39 years old, married with four children. She lives in Angelholm with her husband who is a vicar. She’s deeply religious. She works on trains, takes care of her family, and spends the little free time she has on handicrafts and various efforts for the mission. What should I do with her? Call her in for an interview? Ask her if she killed three men in the past month? If she knows where Katarina Taxell and her newborn baby are?”

  “Put her aside,” Wallander said. “That’s a step in the right direction too.”

  Hansson had come back from Lodinge when the rain and wind made it impossible to keep working. He told Wallander that from tomorrow he’d need more people on the job. Then he set to work on the eight remaining women. Wallander tried in vain to send him home, at least to change out of his wet clothes. But he refused, and Wallander could see that he wanted to shake off the unpleasant experience of standing out in the mud digging for Krista Haberman’s remains as soon as possible.

  Just after 11 p.m., Wallander was on the phone trying to track down a relative of a female conductor named Wedin. She had moved five times in the past year. She had gone through a messy divorce and was on the sick list often. He was just dialling Information when Martinsson appeared at the door. Wallander could see by Martinsson’s face that something had happened and he hung up quickly.

  “I think I’ve found her,” he said softly. “Yvonne Ander.”

  “Why do you think she’s the one?”

  “She actually lives here in Ystad. She has an address on Liregatan.”

  “What else?”

  “She seems strange in many ways. Elusive, like this whole investigation. But she has a background that should interest us. She has worked both as an assistant nurse and an ambulance medic.”