The Fifth Woman

by Henning Mankell

  He took out his identification. “We’re looking for Margareta Nystedt,” he said.

  “What has she done?” the man asked. “She’s a very friendly young woman. Her husband too.”

  “We just need some information,” Wallander said. “She’s not home. No-one came to the door. Do you happen to know where we could find her?”

  “She works on the hydrofoil,” replied the man. “She’s a waitress.”

  Wallander looked at Birch.

  “Thanks for your help,” said Wallander. “Good luck with the horses.”

  Ten minutes later they braked in front of the hydrofoil terminal.

  “I don’t think we can park here,” Birch said.

  “To hell with it,” said Wallander.

  He felt as if he was running, and that everything would fall apart if he stopped. It took them only a few minutes to find out that Margareta Nystedt was working that morning on Springaren. It had just left Copenhagen and was expected to dock in half an hour. Wallander used the time to move his car. Birch sat on a bench in the departure hall and read a tattered newspaper. The terminal manager came over and said they could wait in the staff room. He wondered whether they wanted him to contact the boat.

  “How much time does she have?” Wallander asked.

  “She’s really supposed to go back to Copenhagen on the next trip.”

  “That won’t be possible.”

  The man was helpful. He promised to see to it that Margareta Nystedt could stay ashore. Wallander assured him that she wasn’t suspected of any crime. He went out onto the dock as the boat pulled in. The passengers struggled against the wind. Wallander was surprised that so many people were travelling across the Sound on a weekday. He waited impatiently. The last passenger was a man on crutches, and then a woman wearing a uniform came out onto the deck. The manager pointed her out to Wallander. She was blonde, with her hair cropped very short, and she was younger than Wallander had expected. She stopped in front of him and crossed her arms. She was cold.

  “Are you the one who wants to talk to me?” she asked.

  “Margareta Nystedt?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Let’s go inside. We don’t have to stand out here freezing.”

  “I don’t have much time.”

  “More than you think. You’re not going back on the next trip.”

  She stopped.

  “Why not? Who decided that?”

  “I have to talk to you. But you have nothing to worry about.”

  He suddenly had a feeling that she was scared. For a brief moment he started to think he was mistaken. That she was the one they were looking for. That he already had the fifth woman at his side, without having met the fourth. Then he realised just as quickly that he was wrong. Margareta Nystedt was young and slender. She wasn’t strong enough. And something about her whole presence told him she wasn’t the murderer.

  They went into the terminal building where Birch was waiting, went into the staff room and sat down. The room was empty. Birch introduced himself. She shook hands with him. Her hand was fragile. Like a bird’s foot, Wallander thought to himself.

  He studied her face. She was about 27 or 28. Her dress was short, and she had nice legs. She was wearing harsh make-up. He got the impression that she had painted over something on her face that she didn’t like. She was nervous.

  “I’m sorry we had to contact you like this,” Wallander said. “But sometimes there are things that can’t wait.”

  “Like my boat, for instance,” she replied. Her voice had a strangely hard sound to it. Wallander hadn’t expected that.

  “It’s not a problem. I’ve talked to your supervisor about it.”

  “What have I done?”

  Wallander looked at her thoughtfully. She had no idea why he and Birch were there. There was no doubt about that. The trap door of his doubt creaked and groaned under his feet.

  She repeated her question. What had she done?

  Wallander glanced at Birch, who was surreptitiously looking at her legs.

  “Katarina Taxell,” Wallander said. “Do you know her?”

  “I know who she is. Whether I know her is a different story.”

  “How did you meet her? What have you had to do with her?”

  Suddenly she gave a start. “Has something happened to her?”

  “No. Answer my questions.”

  “Answer mine! I only have one. Why are you asking me about her?”

  Wallander saw that he had been too impatient. He had moved too fast. Her aggression was understandable.

  “Nothing has happened to Katarina. And she’s not suspected of committing any crime. Nor are you. But we need to get some information about her. That’s all I can tell you. After you’ve answered my questions, I’ll leave and you can go back to work.”

  She gave him a searching look. She was starting to believe him.

  “About three years ago you spent time with her. Back then you were working as a waitress on the railway dining cars.”

  She seemed surprised that he knew about her past. Wallander had the impression that she was on her guard, which in turn made him sharpen his attention.

  “Is that true?”

  “Of course it’s true. Why would I deny it?”

  “And you knew Katarina Taxell?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you meet her?”

  “We worked together.”

  Wallander gave her a surprised look before he continued.

  “Isn’t she a teacher?”

  “She was taking a break. That’s when she worked on the train.”

  Wallander looked at Birch, who shook his head. He hadn’t heard about this either.

  “When was this?”

  “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 Malmö 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 Malmö 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 Höglund 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 Malmö 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 Lödinge.

  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 Malmö.

  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 Skåne. 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 Malmö 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 Hög
lund. 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 Skåne. 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 Jämtland.”

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

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

  Wallander remembered the abandoned kennel. He wondered how long it had been empty. Hamrén grabbed a phone and got hold of Sven Tyrén and they got the answer. Eriksson’s last dog was found dead in the kennel one morning a few weeks before Eriksson was murdered. Tyrén 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.