Henning Mankell - The Fifth Woman

“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?”

Hoglund 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 Vollsjo. 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 Vollsjo. 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.

Hoglund 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 Hoglund. 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. Hamren, perhaps. I can’t talk right now.”

“I called because I have a message,” Svedberg said. “Hansson called from Hassleholm. 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 Hoglund 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. Hoglund 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 Hoglund 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 Hoglund 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 Hoglund 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 Hamren 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 Hamren 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 Hamren 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 Hoglund 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.