The Fifth Woman

by Unknown

  “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 Åkeson, 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 blame. 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 Vollsjö. 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 Grundén. 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 Malmö. 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.

  She started planning how it would take place, but something bothered her. The men who were watching Katarina’s house. They had come to stop her. They were trying to get to her through Katarina. Maybe they had started to suspect that a woman was behind all that had happened. She was counting on that. First they would think it was a man. Then they would begin to have doubts. Finally they would see that they had been looking in the wrong direction.

  They would never find her. Never. She looked at the baking oven and thought about Tore Grundén. He lived in Hässleholm and worked in Malmö. Then it came to her how it would happen. It was almost embarrassingly easy. She could do it on the job. During working hours. With pay.

  CHAPTER 34

  They started digging early on the morning of Friday, 21 October. The light was still quite dim. Wallander and Hansson had marked off the first quadrant with crime-scene tape. The officers, dressed in overalls and gumboots, knew what they were looking for. Their apprehension seemed in tune with the cool morning air. Wallander felt as though he were in a cemetery. Somewhere in the earth they might come upon the remains of a body.

  He had put Hansson in charge of the digging. Wallander was going to work with Birch to track down the waitress who had once made Katarina Taxell laugh on a street in Lund. For half an hour, he stayed out in the mud where the men had started digging. Then he walked up the path to the farm where his car was waiting. He called Birch and caught him at home. Birch had managed to discover that they might be able to find the name of the waitress they were looking for in Malmö. Birch was having coffee when Wallander called. They agreed to meet outside the station in Malmö.

  This is the fourth woman involved in the investigation. There was Krista Hab
erman, then Eva Runfeldt and then Katarina Taxell. The waitress was the fourth woman. Was there another woman, a fifth one? Was she the one they were looking for? Or had they reached their goal if they succeeded in finding the waitress? Was she the one who made the night-time visits to Ystad’s maternity ward? Without being able to explain why, he doubted that the waitress was the woman they were really searching for. Maybe she could give them a lead, but he couldn’t hope for much more than that.

  He drove through the grey autumn countryside in his old car, wondering absentmindedly how the winter would be. When had they had snow for Christmas in the past few years? It was so long ago he couldn’t remember.

  He reached Malmö station, and found a carpark next to the main entrance. He thought of getting a cup of coffee before Birch arrived, but time was tight.

  He found Birch on the other side of the canal, on his way across the bridge. He must have parked up by the square. They shook hands. Birch was wearing a knitted cap that was much too small. He was unshaven and looked as though he hadn’t had enough sleep.

  “Have you started digging?” he asked.

  “At 7 a.m.,” Wallander replied.

  Birch nodded gloomily. He pointed at the station.

  “We’re supposed to meet a man named Karl-Henrik Bergstrand,” he said. “Normally he doesn’t get in this early. He promised to be here today to meet us.”

  They went into the administrative offices of Swedish Railways. Bergstrand was already there. He was in his early 30s. Wallander assumed that he represented the new, youthful image of the company. They introduced themselves.

  “Your request is unusual,” Bergstrand said and laughed. “But we’ll see if we can help you.”

  He invited them into his spacious office. Wallander found his self-confidence extraordinary. When Wallander had been 30, he was still insecure about almost everything.

  Bergstrand sat down behind his big desk. Wallander looked at the furniture in the room. Maybe that explained why their tickets were so expensive.

  “We’re looking for a dining car attendant,” Birch began. “A woman.”

  “An overwhelming majority of the people working in train service are women,” Bergstrand replied. “It would have been significantly easier to find a man.”

  “We don’t know her name,” Birch said. “All we know is what she looks like.”

  Bergstrand gave him a surprised look.

  “Do you really have to try to find someone you know so little about?”

  “We do,” Wallander interjected.

  “We know which train she worked on,” said Birch.

  He gave Bergstrand the information they had from Annika Carlman. Bergstrand shook his head.

  “This was three years ago,” he said.

  “We know that,” said Wallander. “But I assume that you have personnel records?”

  “That’s really not something I can answer,” Bergstrand said. “Swedish Railways is divided into many enterprises. The restaurants are a subsidiary. They have their own personnel administration. They’re the ones who can answer your questions.”

  Wallander was starting to get both impatient and annoyed. “Let’s get one thing clear,” he interrupted. “We’re not looking for this waitress just for the fun of it. We want to find her because she may have important information relating to a complicated murder investigation. So we don’t care who answers our questions. But we’re anxious to get it done as fast as possible. I assume you can get hold of someone who can help us,” he said. “We’ll sit here and wait.”

  “Is it about the murders in the Ystad area?” Bergstrand asked with interest.

  “Exactly. And this waitress might know something that’s important.”

  “Is she a suspect?”

  “No,” Wallander replied. “She’s not a suspect. No shadow will be cast on either the train or the sandwiches.”

  Bergstrand got up and left the room.

  “He seemed a little arrogant,” Birch said. “It was good what you said to him.”

  “It’d be even better if he could give us an answer,” Wallander said.

  While they waited, Wallander called Hansson in Lödinge. They were digging towards the middle of the first quadrant. They hadn’t found anything.

  “Unfortunately it’s already leaked out,” Hansson said. “We’ve had a number of people hanging around up at the farm.”

  “Keep them at a distance,” Wallander told him. “I guess that’s all we can do.”

  “Nyberg wants to talk to you. It’s about that tape recording of Katarina Taxell and her mother.”

  “Were they able to identify the noise in the background?”

  “I think not, but it’s better if you talk to him yourself.”

  “They couldn’t say anything at all?”

  “They thought someone near the phone was pounding on the floor or the wall. But what good does that do us?”

  Wallander had started to hope too soon.

  “It couldn’t very well be Taxell’s newborn baby,” Hansson said.

  “Apparently we have access to an expert who might be able to work out whether the phone call came from far away or close by. But it’s a complicated process. Nyberg said it would take at least a couple of days.”

  “We’ll have to settle for that,” Wallander said.

  Bergstrand came back into the office and Wallander quickly ended his conversation.

  “It’ll take a while,” Bergstrand said. “We have to get hold of a personnel list that’s three years old and the company has undergone a lot of changes since then. But I’ve explained that it’s important. They’re getting right onto it.”

  “We’ll wait,” Wallander said.

  Bergstrand didn’t seem overly enthusiastic about having two police officers sitting in his office, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Coffee’s one of your specialities, isn’t it?” Birch asked. “Can we get some?”

  Bergstrand left the room.

  “I don’t think he’s used to getting the coffee himself,” Birch said gleefully.

  Wallander didn’t reply.

  Bergstrand returned with a tray. Then he excused himself, saying that he had an urgent meeting. They stayed where they were. Wallander drank the coffee and felt his impatience growing. He thought about Hansson and wondered whether he should leave Birch to wait for the waitress to be identified. He decided to stay half an hour. No more.

  “I’ve been trying to get abreast of everything that’s happened,” Birch said after a while. “I admit I’ve never been involved in anything like this before. Could the killer really be a woman?”

  “We can’t ignore what we know,” Wallander replied.

  At the same time the feeling that kept plaguing him returned. The fear that he was steering the whole investigation into terrain that consisted of nothing but pitfalls. At any moment the trap door could open under their feet.

  “We haven’t had many female serial killers in this country,” he said.

  “If any,” Wallander said. “Besides, we don’t know if she’s committed the murders. Our clues will either lead us to her alone or to someone who is working behind her.”

  “And you think she regularly serves coffee on trains between Stockholm and Malmö?”

  Birch’s doubt was unmistakable.

  “No,” Wallander replied. “I don’t think she serves coffee. The waitress is probably just the fourth step along the way.”

  Birch stopped asking questions. Wallander looked at the clock and wondered if he should call Hansson again. The half hour was almost up. Bergstrand was still busy with his meeting. Birch was reading a brochure.

  Another 30 minutes passed. Wallander’s patience was running out.

  Bergstrand came back.

  “It looks like we’re going to solve it,” he said brightly. “But it’ll take a little while longer.”

  “How long?”

  Wallander didn’t hide his irritation. It probably wasn’t justified, but he couldn’
t help it.

  “Maybe half an hour. They’re driving the files over here. That takes time.”

  They continued to wait. Birch put down his brochure and dozed off. Wallander went over to the window and looked out at Malmö. To the right he caught a glimpse of the hydrofoil terminal. He thought about the times he had stood there waiting for Baiba. How many? Twice. It felt more than that. He called Hansson. Nothing. The digging was going to take time. Hansson also said it had started to rain. Wallander gloomily realised the extent of this depressing work.

  The whole thing is going to hell, he thought suddenly. I’ve steered the whole investigation right into perdition. Birch started snoring. Wallander kept on checking his watch. Bergstrand came back. Birch woke up with a start. Bergstrand had a piece of paper in his hand.

  “Margareta Nystedt,” he said. “That’s probably the person you’re looking for. She was the only one handling the serving that day for the departure in question.”

  Wallander jumped up from his chair. “Where is she now?”

  “I don’t actually know. She stopped working for us about a year ago.”

  “Damn,” Wallander said.

  “But we have her address,” Bergstrand went on. “She might not have moved just because she stopped working for us.”

  Wallander grabbed the piece of paper. It was an address in Malmö.

  “Carl Gustaf’s Road,” Wallander said. “Where’s that?”

  “Near Pildamm Park,” replied Bergstrand.

  Wallander saw that there was a phone number, but he decided not to call it. He would go there himself.

  “Thanks for your help,” he said to Bergstrand. “Can I count on this information being correct? Was she the only one on duty that day?”

  “Swedish Railways is known for its reliability,” said Bergstrand. “That means that we take care to keep track of our employees. Both in the administration and in the subsidiaries.”

  Wallander didn’t understand the connection, but he didn’t have time to ask. “Then let’s go,” he said to Birch.

  They left the station. Birch went in Wallander’s car. It took them less than ten minutes to find the address. It was a five-storey block of flats. Margareta Nystedt lived on the fifth floor. They took the lift. Wallander rang the bell before Birch was even out of the lift, waited, and then rang again. No answer. He swore to himself, then he made a quick decision. He rang the bell next door. The door opened almost at once. An elderly man gave Wallander a stern look. His shirt was unbuttoned over his paunch and he was holding a betting form.