The Fifth Woman

“That doesn’t explain why he would be impaled on bamboo stakes.”

  “Hate can blind people in the same way envy can. Or jealousy.”

  She shook her head.

  “When I saw Eriksson’s body on the stakes I felt instinctively that we were dealing with much more than the murder of an old man,” she said. “I can’t explain it better than that, but the feeling was there. And it was strong.”

  Wallander snapped out of his weariness. She had said something important. Something that vaguely touched on thoughts that had crossed his own mind.

  “Keep going,” he said. “Think harder!”

  “There isn’t that much more. The man was dead. Nobody who saw the scene will ever forget it. It was a murder. But there was more.”

  “Every murderer has his own language,” Wallander said. “Is that what you mean?”

  “More or less.”

  “He was making a statement?”

  “Possibly.”

  In a code, Wallander thought. A code we haven’t cracked.

  “You may be right,” he said.

  They sat in silence. Wallander got up and went back to gathering his papers. He discovered something that didn’t belong to him.

  “Is this yours?”

  She glanced at the paper.

  “That looks like Svedberg’s writing.”

  Wallander tried to make out what had been scrawled in pencil. It was something about a maternity ward. About a woman he didn’t know.

  “What the hell is this?” he said. “Is Svedberg having a baby? He isn’t even married. Is he even dating anyone?”

  She took the note out of his hand and read it.

  “Evidently somebody reported a woman wandering around the maternity ward dressed like a nurse,” she said, handing back the paper.

  “We’ll have to check it out when we have time,” Wallander replied sarcastically. He considered tossing the note in the waste-paper basket, but changed his mind. He’d give it to Svedberg the next day.

  They parted in the hall.

  “Who’s taking care of your children?” he asked. “Is your husband home?”

  “He’s in Mali.”

  Wallander didn’t know where Mali was, but he didn’t ask.

  Höglund left the deserted station. Wallander put Svedberg’s piece of paper on his desk and picked up his jacket. On the way out to the front desk he stopped at the dispatch office, where a lone officer sat reading a newspaper.

  “Anybody call about Lödinge?” he asked.

  “Not a peep.”

  Wallander went outside to his car. It was windy. Ann-Britt hadn’t really answered his question about her children. He searched through all his pockets before he found his car keys. Then he drove home. Even though he was tired, he sat on his sofa and thought through everything that had happened during the day. Most of all he worried about what Höglund had said just before she left. That the murder of Holger Eriksson was something more. But how could a murder be more than a murder?

  It was almost 3 a.m. when he went to bed. Before he fell asleep he remembered that he had to call his father and Linda the next day.

  He woke up with a start at 6 a.m. He had been dreaming. Eriksson was alive. He was standing on the wooden bridge across the ditch. Just as it collapsed, Wallander woke up. He forced himself to get out of bed. It had started raining again. In the kitchen he discovered he was out of coffee, so he made do with two aspirin, and then sat for a long time at the table with his head propped on one hand.

  At 6.45 a.m. he arrived at the station. When he opened the door of his office he noticed something he hadn’t seen the night before. There was a parcel on the chair by the window. Ebba had arranged for Gösta Runfeldt’s mail-order to be picked up. He hung up this jacket, wondering for a second whether he actually had the right to open it. Then he pulled off the paper and opened the box inside. He was frowning at the contents when Martinsson walked past his door.

  “Come here,” Wallander called to him. “Come and take a look at this.”

  CHAPTER 9

  They peered at Gösta Runfeldt’s parcel. To Wallander it seemed like junk: wires and tiny black boxes whose purpose he couldn’t guess. But it was clear to Martinsson what Runfeldt had ordered and the police had paid for.

  “This is highly sophisticated bugging equipment,” he said, picking up one of the boxes.

  Wallander shot him a sceptical look.

  “Can you really buy bugging equipment from a mail-order company in Borås?” he asked.

  “You can buy anything you want by mail order,” replied Martinsson. “This is the real thing. Whether it’s legal is another question. The importation of this type of equipment is strictly regulated.”

  They unpacked the parcel onto Wallander’s desk. There was more than bugging equipment inside. To their amazement they also found a box containing a magnetic brush and iron filings. That could only mean one thing. Runfeldt intended to test for fingerprints.

  “What do you make of this?” Wallander said.

  Martinsson shook his head. “It seems pretty strange.”

  “What’s a florist doing with bugging equipment? Is he going to spy on his competitors in the tulip business?”

  “The fingerprint stuff is even weirder.”

  Wallander frowned. The equipment was expensive. The company that had sold it was called Secure, with an address on Getängsvägen in Borås.

  “Let’s call and find out if Runfeldt bought anything else,” Wallander said.

  “I suspect they won’t be too willing to give out information on their customers,” Martinsson replied. “Besides, it’s Saturday morning.”

  “They have a 24-hour order line,” Wallander said, pointing to the brochure.

  “That will just be an answering machine,” Martinsson said. “I’ve bought gardening tools through a mail-order company in Borås. They don’t have operators sitting there around the clock, if that’s what you think.”

  Wallander stared at one of the tiny microphones.

  “Can this stuff really be legal?”

  “I think I can tell you now,” Martinsson said. “I’ve got some material in my office that deals with this sort of thing.”

  He returned in a few minutes with some booklets.

  “From the information unit of the national police board,” he said. “The materials they publish are pretty good.”

  “I read them whenever I get a chance,” Wallander said. “But sometimes I wonder if they aren’t publishing too much.”

  “Take a look at this: ‘Bugging as a coercive method in criminal interrogations’,” Martinsson said, placing one of the booklets on the desk. “But maybe that’s not quite what we’re looking for. How about this one: ‘Memorandum on bugging equipment’.”

  Martinsson leafed through it, then stopped and read aloud. “‘According to Swedish law it is illegal to possess, sell, or install bugging equipment.’ Which probably means that it’s also forbidden to manufacture it.”

  “Then we ought to ask our colleagues in Borås to clamp down on that mail-order business,” Wallander said. “It means they’re making illegal sales. And importing illegal goods.”

  “Mail-order businesses are generally legitimate in this country,” Martinsson said. “I suspect this is a rotten apple that the industry itself would like to be rid of.”

  “Get hold of Borås,” Wallander said. “Do it as soon as possible.”

  He thought back on his visit to Runfeldt’s flat. He hadn’t discovered technical equipment of this kind.

  “I think we should ask Nyberg to take a look at this stuff. That should be enough for now. But it does seem strange.”

  Martinsson agreed.

  “I’m going out to Lödinge,” Wallander told him as he put everything back into the box.

  “I managed to track down a salesman who sold cars for Holger Eriksson for more than 20 years,” Martinsson said. “I’m seeing him in Svarte in half an hour. He should be able to give us an idea of the sort of m
an Eriksson was, if anyone can.”

  They parted out in reception. Wallander was carrying Runfeldt’s box of equipment under one arm. He stopped at Ebba’s desk.

  “What did my father say?” he asked.

  “Just asked to tell you to call if you had time.”

  Wallander was instantly suspicious.

  “Did he sound sarcastic?”

  Ebba gave him a stern look.

  “Your father is a very nice man. He has great respect for your work.”

  Wallander, knowing the truth, just shook his head. Ebba pointed at the box.

  “I had to pay for that myself. There isn’t any petty cash at the moment.”

  “Give me the receipt,” said Wallander. “Is it all right if I get you the money by Monday?”

  Ebba agreed, and Wallander left the station. It had stopped raining and the sky was clearing. It was going to be a beautiful autumn day. Wallander put the box on the back seat and drove out of Ystad. The countryside seemed less oppressive in the sunshine, and for a moment his mood lifted. Then Eriksson’s impaled body rose up before him like a nightmare. The fact that Runfeldt was also missing didn’t mean that a similar fate had befallen him, he tried to tell himself. The fact that Runfeldt had ordered bugging equipment could be taken as an indication, paradoxically, that he was still alive. Wallander had wondered whether Runfeldt might have taken his own life – but the equipment made him doubt that this was the case. As Wallander drove through the bright autumn countryside he thought that sometimes he gave in to his inner demons much too easily.

  He turned into the courtyard of Eriksson’s farmhouse and parked. A man Wallander recognised as a reporter from Arbetet was walking towards him. Wallander was carrying Runfeldt’s box under his arm. They said hello, and the reporter nodded at the box.

  “Are you carrying the solution in there?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “But honestly, how’s it going?”

  “There’ll be a press conference on Monday. Until then we don’t have anything to tell you.”

  “But he was impaled on sharpened steel pipes?”

  Wallander gave him an astonished look.

  “Who on earth said that?”

  “One of your colleagues.”

  “There must be a misunderstanding. There weren’t any steel pipes.”

  “But he was impaled?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “It sounds like some sort of torture chamber dug into a field in Skåne.”

  “Your words, not mine.”

  “What are your words, then?”

  “That there will be a press conference on Monday.”

  The reporter shook his head.

  “You’ve got to give me something.”

  “We’re still in the preliminary stage of this investigation. We can confirm that a murder has been committed. But we don’t have any leads.”

  “Nothing?”

  “I have no further comment.”

  The reporter gave up. Wallander knew he would quote him accurately. He was one of the few reporters who didn’t misquote him.

  In the distance the abandoned plastic canopy fluttered down by the ditch. The crime-scene tape was still there. An officer appeared near the tower. They could probably stop guarding the site now. Just as he got to the house the door opened. Nyberg stood there with plastic covers on his shoes.

  “I saw you from the window,” he said.

  Nyberg was in a cheerful mood. That was a good omen for the day’s work.

  “I’ve got a something for you,” Wallander said as he entered. “Take a look at this.”

  “Does it have anything to do with Eriksson?”

  “No, Runfeldt. The florist.”

  Wallander set the box down on the desk. Nyberg moved the poem aside to make room to unpack it. His reaction was the same as Martinsson’s. It was definitely bugging equipment. And it was highly sophisticated. Nyberg put on his glasses and searched for the manufacturer’s stamp.

  “It says Singapore. But it was probably made somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  “The US, or Israel.”

  “So why does it say Singapore?”

  “Some of these manufacturers try to maintain as low a profile as possible. They’re involved in one way or another with the international arms trade, and they don’t reveal secrets to each other unless they have to. The parts are manufactured in various countries. Assembly is done somewhere else. And another country altogether provides the stamp of origin.”

  “What could you use this for?” Wallander asked him.

  “You could bug a flat. Or a car.”

  Wallander shook his head.

  “Runfeldt is a florist. What would he need this for?”

  “Find him and ask him yourself,” Nyberg said.

  They put everything back in the box. Nyberg sniffled. He had a bad cold.

  “Try and take it a little easier,” Wallander said. “Get some sleep.”

  “It’s that bloody mud. I get sick from standing out in the rain. I don’t understand why it should be so damned difficult to design a shelter that would hold up under the weather conditions of Skåne.”

  “Write an article about it for Swedish Police,” Wallander suggested.

  “When am I going to have time for that?”

  The question went unanswered. They moved through the house.

  “I haven’t found anything out of the ordinary,” said Nyberg. “At least not yet. But the house has a lot of nooks and crannies.”

  “I’ll hang around for a while,” Wallander said. “I want to think.”

  Nyberg went to join his forensic technicians. Wallander sat down by the window in the sun.

  His gaze took in the large room. What kind of man writes poems about a woodpecker? He read again what Holger Eriksson had written. There were some beautiful turns of phrase. Wallander had written verse in the autograph books of his female friends at school when he was young, but he had never really read poetry. Linda had complained that there were too few books in the house when she was growing up, and Wallander couldn’t argue with her.

  A wealthy car dealer, almost 80 years old, who writes poems, and is interested in birds. So interested that he goes out late at night or in the early dawn and stares at the migrating night birds.

  The sunshine was still warming him as he looked around the room. He remembered something from the report of the break-in. According to Eriksson, the front door was forced open with a crowbar. But nothing seemed to have been stolen.

  There was something else. Wallander searched his memory. Then he remembered. Yes, the safe was untouched. He stood up and went to find Nyberg. He was in one of the bedrooms.

  “Did you find a safe?”

  “No.”

  “We have to find it,” Wallander said. “Let’s start looking.”

  Nyberg was on his knees next to the bed.

  “Are you sure?” Nyberg asked. “I would have found it.”

  “Yes, I am. Somewhere there’s a safe.”

  They searched the house methodically. It took them half an hour before they found the safe. One of Nyberg’s assistants discovered it behind a false oven door in a serving area of the kitchen. The door could be swung open laterally. The safe was built into the wall and had a combination lock.

  “I think I know where the combination is,” Nyberg said. “Eriksson was probably afraid his memory might fail him in his old age.”

  Wallander followed Nyberg back to the desk. In one of the drawers Nyberg had found a little box containing a slip of paper with a row of numbers on it. They tried it on the safe, and the lock clicked into place. Nyberg stepped aside to allow Wallander to open it.

  Wallander peered inside. Then he gave a start. He took a step back and trod on Nyberg’s toes.

  “What is it?” Nyberg asked.

  Wallander nodded for him to look. Nyberg leaned forwards. He recoiled, but less violently than Wallander.

  “It look
s like a human head,” Nyberg said.

  He turned to one of his assistants, who had blanched when he’d heard Nyberg’s words, and asked him to get a torch. They stood there waiting uneasily. Wallander felt dizzy. He took a few deep breaths. Nyberg gave him a curious look. The torch arrived. Nyberg shone it into the safe. There really was a head in there, cut off at the neck. Its eyes were open. But it was shrunken and dried. They couldn’t tell whether it was an ape or a human. Only a few pocket diaries and a notebook were in there with it.

  At that moment Höglund came in. From the tense atmosphere she knew that something had happened. She didn’t ask what, but stood quietly in the background.

  “Should we call in the photographer?” asked Nyberg.

  “No, just take a few pictures yourself,” replied Wallander. “The most important thing is to get it out of the safe.”

  He turned to Höglund.

  “There’s a head in there,” he said. “A shrunken human head. Or maybe it’s an ape.”

  She leaned forwards and looked. Wallander noticed that she didn’t flinch. They left the serving area to give Nyberg and his assistants room to work. Wallander could feel himself sweating.

  “A safe with a head in it,” she said. “Possibly shrunken, possibly an ape. How do we interpret that?”

  “Eriksson must have been a more complex man than we imagined,” Wallander said.

  They waited for Nyberg and his team to empty the safe. It was 9 a.m. Wallander told Höglund about the parcel from the mail-order company in Borås. They decided that someone should go through Runfeldt’s flat more methodically than Wallander had had time to do. It would be best if Nyberg could spare some of his technicians. Höglund called the station and was told that the Danish police had confirmed that no bodies had drifted ashore recently. The Malmö police and the sea rescue service hadn’t found any either.

  At 9.30 a.m. Nyberg appeared carrying the head and the other things he had found in the safe. Wallander moved the poem about the woodpecker aside, and Nyberg set down the head. In the safe with the diaries and notebook, there had been a box with a medal in it. But it was the shrunken head that captured their full attention. In the daylight there was no longer any doubt. It was a human head. A black head. Maybe a child. Or at least a young person. When Nyberg looked at it with a magnifying glass he could see that moths had been at the skin. Wallander grimaced with disgust when Nyberg leaned close to the head and sniffed it.