The Fifth Woman (43 page)

“Katarina Taxell has her child several days later.”

“And the woman doesn’t come back. On the other hand, Eugen Blomberg is murdered.”

“Do you think a nurse is behind all this?”

They looked at each other without saying anything.

Wallander suddenly realised that he had forgotten to tell Svedberg to ask Ylva Brink about an important detail.

“Do you remember the plastic holder we found in Gösta Runfeldt’s suitcase?” he said. “The kind used by the hospital staff?”

Svedberg nodded. He remembered.

“Call the maternity ward,” Wallander said. “Ask Ylva if she remembers whether the woman who knocked her down was wearing a name tag.”

Svedberg got up to use the phone. The conversation was brief.

“She’s positive that she was wearing a name tag,” he said. “Both times.”

“Could she read the name on the tag?”

“She isn’t sure that there was a name.”

Wallander thought a moment.

“She might have lost the badge the first time,” he said. “Somewhere she got hold of a hospital uniform, so she could also have got a new plastic holder.”

“It’d be impossible to find any fingerprints at the hospital,” Svedberg said. “It’s always being cleaned. Besides, we don’t even know if she touched anything.”

“She wasn’t wearing gloves, at least,” Wallander asked. “Ylva would have noticed that.”

Svedberg tapped his forehead with the coffee spoon.

“Maybe so,” he said. “Ylva said that the woman grabbed hold of her when she hit her.”

“She only grabbed her clothes,” Wallander said. “And we won’t find anything on them.”

For a moment he felt discouraged.

“Even so, we should talk to Nyberg,” he said. “Maybe she touched the bed that Katarina Taxell was lying in. We have to try. If we can find fingerprints that match with those that we found in Runfeldt’s suitcase, the investigation would take a big leap forward. Then we could look for the same fingerprints on Eriksson and Blomberg.”

Svedberg pushed across his notes on Katarina Taxell. Wallander saw that she was 33, and self-employed, although it didn’t say what her occupation was. She lived in central Lund.

“We’ll go there first thing tomorrow morning,” he said. “Since the two of us have been working on it tonight, we might as well continue. Now I think it’d be smart for us to get a few hours sleep.”

“It’s strange,” Svedberg said. “First we’re looking for a mercenary soldier, and now we’re looking for a nurse.”

“Who presumably isn’t really a nurse,” Wallander interjected.

“We don’t know that for sure,” Svedberg replied. “Just because Ylva didn’t recognise her doesn’t mean that she’s not a nurse.”

“You’re right. We can’t exclude that possibility.” He got up.

“I’ll drive you home,” Svedberg said. “How is your car?”

“I really should get a new one, but I don’t know how I’m going to afford it.”

One of the duty officers rushed into the room.

“I knew you were here,” he said. “I think something has happened.”

Wallander felt the knot in his stomach. Not again, he thought.

“There’s a man lying badly injured on the side of the road between Sövestad and Lödinge. A lorry driver found him. We don’t know whether he was run over or attacked. An ambulance is on the way out there, but I thought that since it was close to Lödinge . . .”

He never finished his sentence. Svedberg and Wallander were already on their way out of the room.

They arrived just as the medics were lifting the injured man onto a stretcher. Wallander recognised them as the ones he had spoken to outside the hospital earlier.

“Like ships passing in the night,” said one of them.

“Was it a car accident?” Wallander asked him.

“If so, it was a hit-and-run. But it looks more like an assault.”

Wallander looked around. The stretch of road was deserted.

“Who would be walking around here in the middle of the night?” he asked.

The man’s face was covered in blood. He wheezed faintly.

“We’re going now,” the medic said. “We’ve got to hurry. He might have internal injuries.”

The ambulance left. They searched the site in the headlights of Svedberg’s car. A few minutes later a squad car arrived from Ystad. Svedberg and Wallander hadn’t found anything. Not even any skid marks. Svedberg told the officers what had happened, and then they set off back to the station. It was getting windy. The thermometer in Svedberg’s car read 3°C.

“This is probably not related,” Wallander said. “If you drop me off at the hospital, you can go home and get some sleep. At least one of us should be awake in the morning.”

“Where should I pick you up?” Svedberg asked.

“At Mariagatan. Let’s say 6 a.m. Martinsson gets up early. Call him and tell him what happened. Ask him to talk to Nyberg about the plastic holder. And tell him that we’re going to Lund.”

For the second time that night Wallander found himself outside the hospital. When he arrived at the casualty ward, the man was being treated. Wallander sat down and waited. He was exhausted. He couldn’t stop himself from falling asleep. He woke abruptly when someone said his name, and at first he didn’t know where he was. He’d been dreaming that he was walking along dark streets, searching for his father, but he couldn’t find him.

A doctor was standing in front of him. Wallander was instantly wide awake.

“He’s going to make it,” the doctor said. “But he was severely beaten.”

“So it wasn’t a car accident?”

“No. An assault. As far as we can tell, he hasn’t suffered any internal injuries.”

“Did he have any papers on him?”

The doctor gave him an envelope. Wallander took out a wallet, which contained a driver’s licence, among other things. The man’s name was Åke Davidsson. Wallander noticed that he wasn’t supposed to drive at night.

“Can I talk to him?”

“I think it’d be better to wait.”

Wallander decided to ask Hansson or Höglund to follow it up. If this was an assault case, they’d have to leave it in someone else’s hands for the time being. They just didn’t have the time.

Wallander got up to leave.

“We found something that I think might interest you,” the doctor said.

He handed him a piece of paper. Wallander read the scrawled message: “A burglar neutralised by the night guards.”

“What night guards?” he asked.

“I read in the papers about a citizen militia being formed,” said the doctor. “Isn’t it possible that they would call themselves the night guards?”

Wallander stared at the message in disbelief.

“There’s something else that points to it,” the doctor continued. “The paper was attached to his body. It was stapled to his skin.”

Wallander shook his head.

“This is fucking incredible,” he said.

“Yes,” the doctor said. “It’s incredible that it’s gone this far.”

Wallander never liked to call a taxi. He walked home through the empty streets. He thought about Katarina Taxell. And Åke Davidsson.

When he got home, he stretched out on the sofa with a blanket over him, taking off only his jacket and shoes. The alarm clock was set. But he found that he couldn’t sleep. He was starting to get a headache. He went out to the kitchen and took some aspirin. The streetlight swayed in the wind outside his window. Eventually he lay down again, and dozed uneasily until his alarm went off. When he sat up on the sofa he felt more tired than he had on lying down. He went to the bathroom, washed his face with cold water, and then changed his shirt. While he waited for the coffee to brew, he called Hansson at home. It took a long time before he answered. Wallander knew that he had woken him up.

“I’m not done with the Östersund papers,” Hansson said. “I was up until 2 a.m. I have about four kilos left.”

“We’ll talk about that later,” Wallander interrupted him. “I need you to go to the hospital and talk to a man named Åke Davidsson. He was assaulted somewhere near Lödinge last night and left lying by the side of the road, by people who are probably part of a citizen militia. I want you to look after it.”

“What should I do about the Östersund papers?”

“You’ll have to deal with those at the same time. Svedberg and I are going to Lund. I’ll tell you more later.”

He hung up before Hansson could ask any questions. He didn’t have the energy to answer them.

At 6 a.m. Svedberg was parked outside. Wallander stood at the kitchen window with his coffee cup and watched him pull up.

“I talked to Martinsson,” Svedberg said when Wallander got into the car. “He was going to ask Nyberg to start work on the plastic holder.”

“Did Martinsson understand what we came up with?”

“I think so.”

“Then let’s go.”

Wallander leaned back and closed his eyes. The best thing he could do on the way to Lund was sleep.

Katarina Taxell lived in a block of flats on a square that Wallander wasn’t familiar with.

“It might be best if we call Birch,” Wallander said. “So there won’t be any trouble later on.”

Svedberg reached him at home. He handed the phone to Wallander, who explained what had developed. Birch said he’d be there within 20 minutes. They sat in the car and waited. The sky was grey, and the wind had picked up. Birch drew up behind them and they went inside.

“I’ll stay in the background,” Birch said. “You can conduct the conversation.”

Svedberg rang the bell of a flat on the third floor. The door opened almost at once. A woman wearing a dressing gown stood in front of them. She had dark circles under her eyes. She reminded Wallander of Ann-Britt.

Wallander tried to sound as friendly as possible. But he noted her reaction when he said that he was a police officer from Ystad. They went into the flat, which was small and cramped. Everywhere were signs that she had just had a baby. It reminded Wallander of how his own home had looked when Linda was just born. They went into a living room with light-coloured, wooden furniture. On the table lay a brochure that caught Wallander’s attention. “Taxell’s Hair Products”.

“I apologise for coming so early in the morning,” he said as they sat down. “But this can’t wait.”

He wasn’t sure how to continue. She sat across from him and didn’t take her eyes off his face.

“You’ve just had a child at Ystad’s maternity ward,” he said.

“A boy,” she replied. “He was born on 15 October.”

“My congratulations,” Wallander said. Svedberg and Birch murmured something similar.

“About two weeks before that,” Wallander continued, “or to be precise, on the night of 30 September, I wonder if you had a visitor sometime after midnight?”

She gave him a look of incomprehension. “Who would that have been?”

“A nurse who you might not have seen before?”

“I knew all of the nurses who worked at night.”

“This woman came back two weeks later,” he continued. “And we think she was there to visit you.”

“At night?”

“Yes. Sometime after 2 a.m.”

“No-one visited me. And besides, I’m a sound sleeper.”

Wallander nodded slowly. Birch was standing behind the sofa. Svedberg was sitting on a chair against the wall. All of a sudden it was quiet. They were waiting for Wallander to go on, and he planned to do so in a moment. But first he wanted to collect himself. He was still tired. He really should ask her why she was in the maternity ward for so long. Were there complications with her pregnancy? But he didn’t ask her this. Something else was more important.

She wasn’t telling the truth, he knew it. He was convinced that she’d had a visitor, and that she knew the woman who’d been to see her.

Suddenly a child started to cry.

Katarina Taxell got up and left the room. At that moment Wallander decided how he would proceed with the interview. He had sensed that she was being evasive. His years as a policeman had taught him to tell when someone was lying. He stood up and went over to the window where Birch was standing. Svedberg followed. Wallander spoke in a low voice, keeping his eye on the door.

“She’s not telling the truth,” he said.

The others didn’t seem to have noticed anything, or weren’t as convinced as he was, but they made no objections.

“This may take some time,” Wallander went on. “But since in my opinion she’s crucial for us, I’m not going to give up. She knows who that woman is, and I’m more convinced than ever that she’s important.”

Birch suddenly seemed to understand the connection.

“You mean there might be a woman behind all this? The killer is a woman?” He sounded almost frightened by his own words.

“She doesn’t necessarily have to be the killer,” Wallander said. “But there is a woman somewhere near the heart of this investigation. I’m certain of that. At the very least she’s blocking our view of what’s behind all this. Which is why we have to get to her as soon as possible. We have to find out who she is.”

The crying stopped. Svedberg and Wallander returned quickly to their places in the room. A minute went by. Katarina Taxell came back and sat down on the sofa. Wallander could see that she was very much on her guard.

“Let’s return to the maternity ward in Ystad,” Wallander said in a friendly voice. “You say that you were asleep. And nobody visited you there at night?”

“That’s right.”

“You live here in Lund. Yet you choose to give birth in Ystad. Why?”

“I prefer the methods they practise there.”

“I understand,” Wallander said. “My own daughter was born in Ystad.”

She didn’t respond. Wallander sensed that she wanted only to answer the questions. She wasn’t going to say anything voluntarily.

“I have to ask you some questions of a personal nature,” he continued. “Since this is not an interrogation, you can choose not to answer. But then I must warn you that we may have to take you down to the police station and arrange a formal interrogation. We came here because we’re looking for information connected with a number of extremely brutal and violent crimes.”