The Fifth Woman Read online

  Afterwards Wallander would recall the next few hours as an eternal chaos. He had to try to handle a lot of things at once. On the platform, no-one understood what he was talking about. Passengers were swarming around him. Slowly Hansson began to recover, but Martinsson was still unconscious. Wallander raged at the ambulance that took so long to arrive, and not until some bewildered Hässleholm police appeared on the platform did he start to make some sense of the situation.

  Martinsson’s breathing was steady. By the time the ambulance attendants carried him off, Hansson had managed to get to his feet again, and he went with them to the hospital. Wallander explained to the police officers that they had been trying to arrest a female conductor, but that she had escaped.

  By that time the train had left. Wallander wondered whether Grundén had boarded it. Did he have any idea how close to death he had come? Wallander realised that no-one understood what he was talking about. Only his identification made them accept that he was a policeman and not a lunatic.

  Now he had to find where Yvonne Ander had gone. He called Höglund and told her what had happened. She would see to it that they were prepared if she came back to Vollsjö. The flat in Ystad was already under surveillance, but Wallander didn’t think that she would go there. They were hot on her heels, and they wouldn’t give up until they caught her. Where could she go? He couldn’t ignore the possibility that she would simply take flight, but it didn’t seem likely. She planned everything. Wallander told Höglund to ask Katarina Taxell one question. Did Yvonne Ander have another hideout?

  “I think she always has an escape route,” Wallander said. “She may have mentioned an address, a location.”

  “What about Taxell’s flat in Lund?”

  Wallander saw that she might be right.

  “Call up Birch. Ask him to check.”

  “She has keys to it,” Höglund said. “Katarina told me so.”

  Wallander was escorted to the hospital by a police car. Hansson lay on a stretcher. His scrotum was swollen and he would be kept in for observation. Martinsson was still unconscious. A doctor diagnosed a severe concussion.

  “The man who hit him must have been extremely strong,” the doctor said.

  “You’re right,” said Wallander, “except that the man was a woman.”

  He left the hospital. Where had she gone? Something was nagging at Wallander’s subconscious. Something that could give him the answer to where she was or at least where she might be headed. Then he remembered what it was. He stood quite still outside the hospital. Nyberg had been absolutely clear on something. The fingerprints in the tower must have been put there later. Yvonne Ander might be similar to him. In tense situations she sought out solitude. A place where she could take stock, come to a decision. All her actions gave the impression of detailed planning and precise timetables. Now her ordered life had come crashing down around her. He decided it was worth a try. The site was sealed off, of course, but Hansson had told him that the work wouldn’t be resumed until they got the extra help they needed. Wallander knew that she could reach the spot by the same route she had used before.

  Wallander said goodbye to the police who had helped him and promised to give them a full report on the investigation later that day. No real damage had been done. The officers who had been admitted to the hospital would soon be on their feet again.

  Wallander got into his car and called Höglund again. He didn’t tell her what it was about, just that he wanted her to meet him at the turn-off to Eriksson’s farm.

  It was after 10 a.m. when Wallander arrived in Lödinge. Höglund was standing by her car waiting for him. They drove the last stretch up to the farmhouse in Wallander’s car. He stopped 100 metres from the house.

  “I might be wrong,” he said. “But there’s a chance she might come back here to the bird tower. She’s been here before.” He reminded her of what Nyberg said about the fingerprints.

  “What would she be doing here?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, but she’s on the run. She needs to make some kind of decision. And we know that she’s been here before.”

  They got out of the car. The wind was biting.

  “We found the hospital uniform,” she said. “And a plastic bag with underpants in it. We can assume that Runfeldt was held captive at Vollsjö.”

  They were approaching the house.

  “What do we do if she’s up in the tower?”

  “We take her. I’ll go around the other side of the hill. If she comes here, that’s where she’ll park her car. You walk down the path. This time we’ll have our guns drawn.”

  “I don’t think she’ll come,” Höglund said.

  Wallander didn’t reply. He knew there was a good chance she was right.

  They found some shelter in the courtyard. The crime-scene tape around the ditch where they had been digging for Krista Haberman’s remains had been torn away in the wind. The tower was empty. It stood out sharply in the autumn light.

  “Let’s wait a while anyway,” Wallander said. “If she comes it’ll be soon.”

  “There’s an APB out for her,” she said. “If we don’t find her, she’ll be hunted all over the country.” They stood silent for a moment. The wind tore at their clothes.

  “What is it that drives her?” she asked.

  “She’s probably the only one who can answer that question. But shouldn’t we assume that she was abused too?”

  Höglund didn’t reply.

  “I believe she’s a lonely person,” Wallander said. “And she thinks the purpose of her life is a calling to kill on behalf of others.”

  “Once I thought we were out after a mercenary,” she said. “And now we’re waiting for a female conductor to appear in a tower built for watching birds.”

  “That mercenary angle might not have been so far-fetched,” Wallander said thoughtfully. “She’s a woman, and she doesn’t get paid for killing as far as we know. But there’s something that reminds me of what we initially believed that we were dealing with.”

  “Katarina Taxell said that she got to know her through a group of women who met at Vollsjö. But their first encounter was on a train. You were right about that. Apparently she asked about a bruise Taxell had on her temple. It was Eugen Blomberg who had abused her. I never found out exactly how it all happened, but she confirmed that Yvonne Ander had previously worked in a hospital and also as an ambulance medic. She saw plenty of abused women. Later she got in contact with them and invited them to Vollsjö. You might call it an extremely informal support group. She found out the names of the men who had abused the women. Katarina acknowledged that it was Yvonne Ander who visited her at the hospital. On the second visit she gave Ander the father’s name. Eugen Blomberg.”

  “That signed his death warrant,” Wallander said. “I also think she’s been preparing this for a long time. Something happened that triggered it all. And neither you nor I can know what that was.”

  “Does she know it herself?”

  “We have to suppose that she does. If she isn’t completely insane.”

  They waited. The wind came and went in strong gusts. A police car drove up to the entrance of the courtyard. Wallander asked them not to come back until further notice. He gave no explanation, but he was unequivocal. They kept on waiting. Neither of them had anything to say.

  At 10.45 a.m. Wallander cautiously put a hand on her shoulder.

  “There she is,” he whispered.

  Höglund looked. A person had appeared up by the hill. It had to be Yvonne Ander. She stood there and looked around. Then she began to climb the stairs to the tower.

  “It’ll take me 20 minutes to go around to the back of the tower,” Wallander said. “Then you start to walk down the path. I’ll be behind her if she tries to escape.”

  “What happens if she attacks me? Then I’ll have to shoot.”

  “I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen. I’ll be there.”

  He ran to the car and drove as fast as he could to
the tractor path that led up the back of the hill. He didn’t dare drive all the way, so he go out and ran. It took longer than he had calculated. A car was parked at the top of the tractor path. Also a Golf, but a black one. The phone rang in Wallander’s jacket pocket. He stopped. It might be Höglund. He answered and kept walking along the tractor path.

  It was Svedberg.

  “Where are you? What the hell is going on?”

  “We’re at Eriksson’s farm. I can’t go into it right now. It would be good if you could come out here with someone. Hamrén, perhaps. I can’t talk right now.”

  “I called because I have a message,” Svedberg said. “Hansson called from Hässleholm. Both he and Martinsson are feeling better. Martinsson is conscious again, anyway. But Hansson wondered if you had picked up his revolver.”

  Wallander froze.

  “His revolver?”

  “He said it was lost.”

  “I don’t have it.”

  “It couldn’t still be lying on the platform, could it?”

  At that instant Wallander could see the events played out clearly before him. Ander grabs hold of Hansson’s jacket and knees him hard in the groin. Then she quickly bends over him, and that’s when she takes the revolver.

  “Shit!” Wallander yelled.

  Before Svedberg could answer he had hung up and stuffed the phone back in his pocket. He had put Höglund in mortal danger. The woman in the tower was armed.

  Wallander ran. His heart pounded like a hammer in his chest. He saw by his watch that she must already be on her way down the path. He stopped and dialled her phone number. No connection. He started running again. His only chance was to get there first. Höglund didn’t know that Ander was armed. His terror made him run faster. He had reached the back of the hill. She must be almost to the ditch now. Walk slowly, he tried to tell her in his mind. Trip and fall, slip, anything. Don’t hurry. Walk slowly. He had pulled out his gun and was stumbling up the slope behind the bird tower. When he reached the top he saw Höglund at the ditch. She had her revolver in her hand. The woman in the tower hadn’t seen her. He shouted.

  “Ann-Britt, she’s got a gun! Get out of there!”

  He aimed his revolver at the woman standing with her back to him up there in the tower. In the same instant a shot rang out. He saw Höglund jerk and fall backwards into the mud. Wallander felt as if someone had thrust a sword right through him. He stared at the motionless body in the mud and sensed that the woman in the tower had turned around. Then he dived to the side and fired towards the top of the tower. The third shot hit home. Ander lurched and dropped Hansson’s gun.

  Wallander rushed down into the mud. He stumbled into the ditch and scrambled up the other side. When he saw Höglund on her back in the mud he thought she was dead. She had been killed by Hansson’s revolver and it was all his fault.

  For a split second he saw no way out but to shoot himself. Right where he stood, a few metres from her. Then he saw her moving feebly. He fell to his knees by her side. The whole front of her jacket was bloody. She was deathly pale and stared at him with fear in her eyes.

  “It’ll be all right,” he said. “It will be all right.”

  “She was armed,” she mumbled. “Why didn’t we know that?”

  Wallander could feel the tears running down his face. He called for an ambulance. Later he would remember that while he waited, he had steadily murmured a confused prayer to a god he didn’t really believe in. In a haze he was aware that Svedberg and Hamrén had arrived. Ann-Britt was carried away on a stretcher. Wallander was sitting in the mud. They couldn’t get him to stand up. A photographer who had raced after the ambulance when it drove off from Ystad took a picture of Wallander as he sat there. Dirty, forlorn, hopeless. The photographer managed to take that one picture before Svedberg, in a rage, chased him off. Under pressure from Chief Holgersson the photograph was never published.

  Meanwhile, Svedberg and Hamrén brought Ander down from the tower. Wallander had hit her high on the thigh. She was bleeding profusely, but her life was not in danger. She too was taken away in an ambulance. Svedberg and Hamrén finally managed to get Wallander up from the mud and helped him up to the farmhouse. The first report came in from the Ystad hospital. Ann-Britt Höglund had been shot in the abdomen. The wound was severe, and her condition was critical.

  Wallander rode with Svedberg to get his car. Svedberg was unsure about letting Wallander drive alone to Ystad, but Wallander assured him that he would be OK. He drove straight to the hospital and then sat in the hall waiting for news of Ann-Britt’s condition. He still hadn’t had time to get cleaned up. He didn’t leave the hospital until many hours later, when the doctors assured him that her condition had stabilised.

  All of a sudden he was gone. No-one had noticed him leave. Svedberg began to worry, but he thought he knew Wallander well enough: he just wanted to be alone.

  Wallander left the hospital right before midnight. The wind was still blowing hard, and it would freeze overnight. He got into his car and drove to the cemetery where his father lay buried. He found his way to the grave and stood there, completely empty inside, still caked with mud.

  Around 1 a.m. he got home and called Baiba. They talked for a long time. Then he finally undressed and took a hot bath. Afterwards he dressed and returned to the hospital. Just after 3 a.m. he went into the room where Yvonne Ander lay, under guard. She was asleep when he entered the room cautiously. He stood for a long time looking at her face. Then he left without saying a word.

  After an hour he was back. At dawn Lisa Holgersson came to the hospital and said they had reached Höglund’s husband, in Dubai. He would arrive at Kastrup Airport later that day.

  No-one knew if Wallander was listening to anything anyone said to him. He sat motionless on a chair, or stood at a window staring into the gale. When a nurse wanted to give him a cup of coffee he burst into tears and locked himself in the bathroom. But most of the time he sat unmoving on his chair and looked at his hands.

  At about the same time Höglund’s husband landed at Kastrup, a doctor gave them the news they had all been waiting for. She was going to make it, and probably wouldn’t have any permanent injury. She was lucky. All the same, her recovery would take time and the convalescence would be long. Wallander stood as he listened to the doctor, as if he were receiving a sentence in court. Afterwards he walked out of the hospital and disappeared somewhere in the wind.

  On Monday, 24 October, Yvonne Ander was indicted for murder. She was still in hospital. So far she hadn’t spoken a single word, not even to the lawyer appointed to act for her. Wallander had tried to question her that afternoon. She just stared at him. As he was about to leave, he turned in the door and told her that Ann-Britt Höglund was going to recover. He thought he saw a reaction from her; that she looked relieved, maybe glad.

  Martinsson was still off work with his concussion. Hansson went back on duty, even though he had a hard time walking and sitting for several weeks.

  Their primary focus during this period was to complete the laborious task of establishing exactly what had happened. One thing they hadn’t managed to find conclusive evidence for was whether it was the remains of Krista Haberman that they had dug up in Eriksson’s field. There was nothing to disprove it, but no hard evidence either. And yet they were certain. A crack in the skull told them how Eriksson had killed her more than 25 years earlier. Everything else began to be cleared up, although slowly. There was another question mark. Had Runfeldt killed his wife? The only one who might give them the answer was Ander, and she still wasn’t talking. They explored Ander’s life in detail and uncovered a story that only partially told them who she was and why she might have acted as she did.

  One afternoon, as they were sitting in a long meeting, Wallander abruptly concluded it by saying something he had been thinking for a long time.

  “Yvonne Ander is the first person I’ve ever met who is both intelligent and insane.”

  He didn’t explain any further. N
o-one doubted that he believed it.

  Every day during this period Wallander went to visit Ann-Britt at the hospital. He couldn’t get over what he was convinced was his responsibility. Nothing anyone said made any difference. He regarded the blame for what had happened as his alone. It was something he would have to live with.

  Yvonne Ander kept silent. One evening Wallander sat in his office late, reading through the extensive collection of letters she had exchanged with her mother. The next day he visited her in jail. That day, she finally started to talk.

  It was 3 November 1994, and frost lay over the countryside around Ystad.

  Skåne

  4 – 5 December 1994

  EPILOGUE

  On the afternoon of 4 December, Kurt Wallander spoke with Yvonne Ander for the last time. He didn’t know then that it would be the last, although they didn’t make an appointment to meet again.

  They had come to an end. There was nothing more to add. Nothing to ask about, no reply to give. And after that the long and complex investigation began to slip out of his consciousness for the first time. Although more than a month had passed since they captured her, the case had continued to dominate his life. In all his years as a detective, he had never had such an intense need to understand. Criminal acts were always just the surface, and sometimes, once the surface of a crime had been cracked, chasms opened that no-one could have imagined. This was the case with Yvonne Ander. Wallander punched through the surface and immediately looked down into a bottomless pit. He had decided to climb down into it. He didn’t know where it would lead, for her or for him.

  The first step had been to get her to break her silence. He was successful when he read again the letters that she had exchanged all her adult life with her mother and kept so carefully. Wallander sensed that it was here he could start to break through her aloofness. And he was right. That was 3 November, more than a month earlier. He was still shattered by the fact that Ann-Britt had been shot. He knew by then that she would survive and even regain full health, but the guilt weighed so heavily that it threatened to suffocate him. His best support during that period was Linda. She came to Ystad, even though she didn’t really have time, and took care of him, forcing him to accept that circumstances were to blame, not him. With her help he managed to crawl through the first terrible weeks of November. Aside from the sheer effort of functioning normally, he spent all of his time on Yvonne Ander. She was the one who had shot and nearly killed Ann-Britt. In the beginning he often felt like hitting her. Later it became more important to try and understand her. He managed to break through her silence and get her to start talking. He knotted the rope around himself and started down into the pit.