The Fifth Woman (60 page)

Grundén didn’t seem to understand what had happened to him.

“Yvonne Ander!” Wallander shouted. “Police!”

Martinsson was now almost upon her. Wallander saw him stretch out his arms to grab her. She jabbed with her right fist, hard and accurate. The blow struck Martinsson on the left cheek. He dropped to the platform without a sound. Behind Wallander someone was shouting. A passenger had seen what was going on. Hansson went to draw his revolver, but it was already too late. She grabbed his jacket and kneed him hard in the groin. For a moment she leaned over him as he buckled forwards. Then she started running down the platform. She tore off the overcoat. It fluttered and then blew away on a gust of wind. Wallander stopped beside Martinsson and Hansson. Martinsson was out cold. Hansson was moaning and white in the face. When Wallander looked up she was gone. He took off down the platform running as fast as he could, and caught sight of her just before she vanished across the tracks. He knew the chances of catching up with her were small. And he didn’t know how badly Martinsson was hurt. He turned back and saw that Tore Grundén was gone. Several railway workers came running up. No-one realised in the confusion what had happened.

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.