Henning Mankell - The Fifth Woman

The train came to a halt, its brakes shrieking. Wallander had to push his way through the passengers who were hurrying to board the train and get out of the wind. Suddenly he noticed a lone man standing further down the platform. He was just picking up his bag. Next to him stood a woman, wearing a long overcoat that was being whipped by the wind. A train was coming in from the other direction. Wallander was never sure whether he consciously understood the situation, but he reacted as though everything was perfectly clear. He shoved aside the passengers in his way. Hansson and Martinsson came behind him, without knowing exactly where they were going. Wallander saw the woman grab the man from behind. She almost lifted him off the ground. Wallander sensed more than understood that she intended to throw him in front of the train coming in on the other track. Since he couldn’t reach them in time, he screamed at her. Despite the roar of the engines she heard him. One instant of hesitation was enough. She looked at Wallander. Martinsson and Hansson appeared at his side. They sprinted towards the woman, who had let go of the man. The long coat had blown up, and Wallander caught a glimpse of her uniform underneath. Suddenly she raised her hand and did something that made both Hansson and Martinsson stop in their tracks. She ripped off her hair. It was caught at once by the wind and flew down the platform. Under the wig her hair was short. They started running again.

Grunden 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 Grunden 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 Hassleholm 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 Grunden 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 Hoglund and told her what had happened. She would see to it that they were prepared if she came back to Vollsjo. 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 Hoglund 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,” Hoglund 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 Hoglund 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 Lodinge. Hoglund 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 Vollsjo.”

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,” Hoglund 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.