The Fifth Woman Read online

  Down in the ditch Wallander felt like a rat drowning in a trap. His colleagues were having a hard time. Both Svedberg and Hansson had left the ditch several times because of acute nausea. But Höglund, the person he most wanted to send home early, appeared unperturbed.

  Chief Holgersson had come out as soon as the discovery had been reported. She organised the murder scene so that people wouldn’t slip and fall on top of each other, but a young police trainee stumbled in the clay and fell into the ditch, injuring his hand on one of the stakes. The wound was patched up by a doctor who was trying to work out how to remove the corpse. Wallander happened to see the trainee slip and got a glimpse of what must have happened when Eriksson fell.

  Almost the first thing he had done with Nyberg, their forensic technician, was examine the rough planks. Tyrén had confirmed that they had formed a bridge. Eriksson had placed them there. He told them that he’d once been invited to the tower. Eriksson had been a passionate bird-watcher. It wasn’t a hunting tower, but a viewing tower. The missing binoculars were hanging around Eriksson’s neck. It took Nyberg only a few minutes to determine that the planks had been sawed through. After hearing this, Wallander climbed up out of the ditch and went off to think. He tried to assemble the sequence of events. When Nyberg discovered that the binoculars had night vision, he began to have some idea. At the same time he found it difficult to accept his interpretation. If he was right, then they were dealing with a murder that had been planned and prepared with such ghastly and cruel perfection as to be almost unbelievable.

  Late in the evening they started removing Eriksson’s corpse from the ditch. Along with the doctor and Chief Holgersson, they had to decide whether to dig out the bamboo poles, saw them off, or choose the gruesome option of hoisting the body free from the stakes. On Wallander’s recommendation they chose the last option. They needed to see the murder scene exactly as it was before Eriksson stepped on the planks and fell to his death. Wallander felt compelled to take part in this grisly final act as Eriksson was lifted upwards and then taken away. It was past midnight when they finished; the rain had eased but showed no sign of stopping, and all that could be heard was a generator and the sound of gumboots squelching through the mud.

  There was a momentary lull. Somebody had brought coffee. Weary faces glowed eerily in the white light. Wallander thought he ought to formulate an overview. What had actually happened? How were they going to proceed? Everyone was exhausted now, anxious, soaking wet, and hungry.

  Martinsson stood with a phone pressed to his ear. Wallander wondered if he was talking to his wife, who often worried about him. But when he hung up he told them that a meteorologist had forecast that the rain would stop during the night. Wallander decided that the best thing to do was wait until dawn. They hadn’t yet begun to hunt for the killer; they were still looking for leads to give them a starting point. The dog units hadn’t picked up any scents. Wallander and Nyberg had been up in the tower but had found no clues. Wallander turned to Chief Holgersson.

  “We’re getting nowhere,” he said. “I suggest we meet again at dawn. The best thing we can do now is rest.”

  No-one had any objection. They all wanted to go home. All except Sven Nyberg, of course. Wallander knew he’d want to stay. He’d keep at it through the night, and he’d be there when they returned. As the others started to head up towards the cars by the farmhouse, Wallander hung back.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “I don’t think anything,” Nyberg said. “Except that I’ve never in my life seen anything remotely like this.”

  They stood looking into the ditch. Plastic sheeting had been spread across it.

  “What exactly are we looking at?” asked Wallander.

  “A copy of an Asian trap for large predators,” Nyberg said, “which is also used in wars. They call them pungee stakes.”

  Wallander nodded.

  “Bamboo doesn’t grow this thick in Sweden,” Nyberg went on. “We import it to use for fishing rods and furniture.”

  “Besides, there aren’t any large predators in Skåne,” Wallander said thoughtfully. “And we’re not at war. So what exactly are we looking at?”

  “Something that doesn’t belong here,” Nyberg said. “Something that doesn’t fit. Something that gives me the creeps.”

  Wallander watched him attentively. Nyberg was seldom this loquacious. His expression of both personal revulsion and fear was entirely out of character.

  “Don’t work too late,” Wallander said as he left, but there was no answer.

  Wallander climbed over the barricade, nodded to the officers who would be guarding the scene of the crime overnight, and continued up to the farmhouse. Lisa Holgersson had stopped halfway up the path to wait for him. She had a torch in her hand.

  “We’ve got reporters up there,” she said. “What are we going to tell them?”

  “Not much,” Wallander said.

  “We can’t even give them Eriksson’s name?” she said.

  Wallander pondered this before he replied.

  “I think we can. I’ll assume that the oil-truck driver knows what he’s talking about. He told me Eriksson had no relatives. If we don’t have anyone to inform of his death, we might as well release his name. It might help us.”

  They continued walking. Behind them the floodlights cast an eerie glow.

  “Can we say anything else?” she asked.

  “Tell them it’s a murder,” Wallander replied. “That’s one thing we can say with certainty. But we have no motive and no leads to a suspect.”

  “Have you formed any opinion on that yet?”

  Wallander could feel how tired he was. Every thought, every word he had to say, seemed to take huge effort.

  “I didn’t see any more than you did, but it was very well planned. Eriksson walked into a trap that slammed shut. That means there are at least three conclusions we can easily draw.”

  They stopped again.

  “First, we can assume that whoever did it knew Eriksson and at least some of his habits,” Wallander began. “Second, the killer intended him to die.”

  Wallander turned and was about to start walking again.

  “You said three things.”

  He looked at her pale face in the light from the torch. He wondered vaguely how he looked himself. Had the rain washed away his Italian tan?

  “The killer didn’t just want to take Eriksson’s life,” he said. “He wanted him to suffer. Eriksson may have hung on those stakes for a long time before he died. No-one heard him but the crows. Maybe the doctors can tell us how long he stayed alive.”

  Chief Holgersson grimaced.

  “Who would do something like this?”

  “I don’t know,” said Wallander.

  When they reached the edge of the field, two reporters and a photographer were waiting for them. Wallander knew them all from previous cases. He glanced at Chief Holgersson, who shook her head. Wallander told them as briefly as he could what had happened. They wanted to ask questions, but he held up his hand in dismissal, and the reporters left.

  “You’re a detective with a good reputation,” said the chief. “Last summer you demonstrated how talented you are. There isn’t a police district in Sweden that wouldn’t be glad to have you.”

  They had stopped by her car. Wallander could tell that she meant everything she said, but he was too tired to take it in.

  “Set up this investigation as you see fit. Tell me what you need and I’ll see that you get it.”

  Wallander nodded.

  “We’ll know more in a few hours. Right now we both need to get some sleep.”

  It was almost 2 a.m. when Wallander arrived home. He made a couple of sandwiches and ate them at the kitchen table. Then he set his alarm clock for just after 5 a.m. and lay down on top of his bed.

  They gathered once more in the grey dawn. The rain had stopped, but the wind was blowing again, and it had turned colder. Nyberg and the officers who stayed at the scene o
vernight had been forced to rig up temporary fixtures to keep the plastic sheeting in place. Nyberg and the other forensic technicians were now working down in the ditch, exposed to the biting wind.

  On his way there, Wallander had been turning over in his mind how best to run the investigation. They knew nothing about Eriksson. The fact that he was wealthy could be a motive, but this seemed unlikely. The stakes in the ditch spoke another language. He couldn’t interpret it and didn’t know in which direction it led.

  As usual when he felt unsure, he thought of Rydberg, the old detective who had been his mentor and without whose wisdom, he suspected, he would have been a mediocre criminal investigator. Rydberg had died of cancer almost four years ago. Wallander shuddered when he thought how quickly time had passed. He asked himself what Rydberg would have done.

  Patience, he thought. Rydberg would have told me that now the rule about being patient was more important than ever.

  They set up temporary headquarters in Eriksson’s house. Wallander listed the most important tasks and assigned them as efficiently as possible. Next he attempted the impossible task of summarising the situation, but found that he actually had only one thing to say: that they had nothing to go on.

  “We know very little,” he began. “An oil-truck driver named Sven Tyrén reported what he suspected was a disappearance on Tuesday. Based on what Tyrén has said, and taking into account the date on the poem, we can assume that the murder took place sometime after 10 p.m. last Wednesday night. Exactly when, we can’t say. But it didn’t happen any earlier. We’ll have to wait to see what the pathologist can tell us.”

  Wallander paused. No-one had any questions. Svedberg sniffled. His eyes were glassy and feverish and he should be home in bed, but they both knew that right now they needed all available manpower.

  “We don’t know much about Holger Eriksson,” Wallander went on. “A former car dealer. Wealthy, unmarried, no children. He was a poet and also clearly interested in birds.”

  “We do know a little more than that,” Hansson interrupted. “Eriksson was quite well known in this area, particularly a decade or two ago. You might say he had a reputation for being a horse trader with cars. A tough negotiator. Didn’t tolerate the unions. Made money hand over fist. He was mixed up in tax disputes and suspected of certain illegalities, but was never caught, if I remember correctly.”

  “So he may have had enemies,” Wallander said.

  “It’s probably safe to assume so, but that doesn’t mean they’d be prepared to commit murder. Especially not the way this one was done.”

  Wallander decided to wait to discuss the sharpened bamboo stakes and the bridge. He wanted to take things in order, to keep everything straight in his own mind. This was something else Rydberg had often reminded him of. A criminal investigation is like a construction site. Everything has to be done in the proper order or the building won’t hold up.

  “Mapping out Eriksson’s life is the first thing we have to do,” Wallander said. “But before we start I want to try and give you my impression of the chronology of the crime.”

  They were sitting at the big kitchen table. In the distance they could see the crime-scene tape and the white plastic canopy flapping in the wind. Nyberg stood like a yellow-clad scarecrow in the mud. Wallander could imagine his weary, irritated voice. But he knew that Nyberg was talented and meticulous. If he waved his arms about he had a reason for it.

  Wallander felt his attention begin to sharpen. He had done this many times before, and he could sense that at this moment the investigative team was starting to track the murderer.

  “I think it happened like this,” Wallander began, speaking slowly. “Sometime after ten o’clock on Wednesday night, or maybe early Thursday morning, Holger Eriksson leaves his house. He doesn’t lock the door because he intends to return soon. He takes a pair of night-vision binoculars with him. He walks down the path towards the ditch, over which he has laid a bridge. He’s probably on his way to the tower. He’s interested in birds. In September and October, the migratory birds head south. I don’t know much about it, but I’ve heard that most of them take off and navigate at night. This would explain the late hour. He steps onto the bridge, which breaks in two because the planks have been sawed almost all the way through. He falls into the ditch and is impaled on the stakes. That’s where he dies. If he called for help, there was no-one to hear him. The farm isn’t named ‘Seclusion’ for nothing.”

  He poured some coffee from a thermos before he continued.

  “That’s how I think it happened,” he said. “We end up with considerably more questions than answers. But it’s where we have to start. We’re dealing with a well-planned murder. Cruel and grisly. We have no obvious or even conceivable motive and no leads.”

  They were all silent. Wallander let his gaze travel around the table. Finally Höglund broke the silence.

  “One more thing is important. Whoever did this had no intention of concealing his actions.”

  Wallander had planned to come to that very point.

  “I think there’s a chance it’s even more than that,” he said. “If we look at this ghastly trap we can interpret it as a kind of statement.”

  “Do you think we’re searching for a madman?” Svedberg asked.

  Everyone around the table knew what he meant. The events of the past summer were still raw in their memories.

  “We can’t rule out that possibility,” Wallander said. “In fact, we can’t rule out anything at all.”

  “It’s like a bear trap,” Hansson said. “Or something you’d see in an old war movie set in Asia. A peculiar combination: a bear trap and a bird-watcher.”

  “Or a car dealer,” Martinsson added.

  “Or a poet,” Höglund said. “We have plenty of choices.”

  Wallander ended the meeting. They would use Eriksson’s kitchen whenever they had to meet. Svedberg drove off to talk to Sven Tyrén and the girl at the oil company who’d taken Eriksson’s order. Höglund would see to it that all the neighbours in the area were contacted and interviewed. Wallander remembered the letters and asked her to talk to the rural postman too. Hansson would go over the house with some of Nyberg’s forensic technicians, while Chief Holgersson and Martinsson would work together to organise the other tasks.

  The investigative wheel had started to turn.

  Wallander put on his jacket and walked down to the ditch. Ragged clouds chased across the sky. He bent into the wind. Suddenly he heard the distinctive sound of geese. He stopped and looked up at the sky. It took a moment before he saw the birds, a small group high up, just below the clouds, heading southwest. He guessed that, like all other migratory birds crossing Skåne, they would leave Sweden over Falsterbo Point.

  Wallander stood there, watching the geese, thinking of the poem lying on the desk. Then he walked on, his unease increasing steadily.

  There was something in this brutal killing that shook him to the core. It could be an act of blind hatred or insanity, but cold calculation lay behind the murder. He couldn’t decide which scared him more.

  Nyberg and his forensic technicians had begun lifting the bloody stakes from the clay. Each pole was wrapped in plastic and carried to a waiting car. Nyberg had spots of clay on his face and worked with abrupt, angry movements. Wallander felt as though he was looking down into a grave.

  “How’s it going?” he asked, trying to sound encouraging.

  Nyberg muttered something unintelligible. Wallander decided to save his questions. Nyberg was irascible and moody and thought nothing of starting a quarrel with anyone. The general opinion at the station was that Nyberg wouldn’t hesitate to yell at the national police commissioner at the slightest provocation.

  The police had built a makeshift bridge across the ditch. Wallander walked up the hill on the other side, gusts of wind tearing at his jacket. He studied the tower, which stood about three metres high. It was built of the same wood that Eriksson had used for his bridge. A stepladder was leaning
against the tower, and Wallander climbed up. The platform was no bigger than one square metre. The wind whipped at his face. From only three metres up, the appearance of the landscape was quite changed. He could see Nyberg in the ditch. In the distance he saw Eriksson’s farmhouse. He squatted down and began studying the platform. Suddenly he regretted setting foot in the tower before Nyberg had finished his examinations. He climbed down again and tried to find a place out of the wind in the lee of the tower. He felt very tired, but something else was troubling him even more. He tried to pin down the feeling. Depression? His happiness had been so shortlived – the holiday, the decision to buy a house, and even get a dog. And Baiba’s visit to look forward to.

  But then an old man was discovered impaled in a ditch, and once again his world had started crumbling away beneath his feet. He wondered how long he could keep this up.

  He forced himself to fend off these thoughts. They had to find whoever had set this macabre death trap for Eriksson as soon as possible. Wallander trudged back down the hill. In the distance he could see Martinsson coming along the path, in a hurry as usual. Wallander went to meet him. He still felt tentative and uncertain. How was he going to approach the investigation? He was searching for a way in.

  Then he saw from Martinsson’s face that something had happened.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “You’re to call someone named Vanja Andersson.”

  Wallander had to search his memory before he remembered. The florist’s shop on Västra Vallgatan.

  “Damn it, we don’t have time for that now.”