“Get Martinsson,” he said. “And ask Svedberg to drive back to the station. They have to keep looking. I think Yvonne Ander has another residence besides this flat. Maybe a house.”
“Shouldn’t we have some surveillance on the street?”
“She won’t come back tonight. But you’re right, we should have. Ask Svedberg to take care of it.”
Hoglund was just about to leave when he held her back. Then he looked around. He went into the kitchen and lit the lamp over the bench. There were two dirty cups there. He wrapped them in a handkerchief and handed them to her.
“Prints,” he said. “Get Svedberg to give them to Nyberg. This could be crucial.”
He went back upstairs, hearing Hoglund shut the front door behind her. He stood still in the dark, then did something that surprised even him. He went in the bathroom, picked up a towel, and sniffed it. He smelled the faint scent of a special perfume. But the smell reminded him of something else. He tried to capture the mental image. The memory of a scent. He sniffed the towel again, but he couldn’t pin it down. Even though he knew he was close. He had smelled that scent somewhere else. He couldn’t remember where or when, but it had been quite recently. He jumped when he heard the door open. Martinsson and Hoglund appeared on the stairs.
“Now we have to start looking,” said Wallander. “We’re searching not only for something to connect her to the murders, but for something that indicates where she has another residence.”
“Why should she have?” Martinsson asked.
They were whispering, as if the person they were looking for was close by and might hear them.
“Katarina Taxell,” Wallander said. “Her baby. And we’ve believed all along that Runfeldt was held captive for three weeks. I’m sure that it wasn’t here, in the middle of Ystad.”
Martinsson and Hoglund started work upstairs. Wallander closed the curtains in the living room and turned on some lamps. Then he stood in the middle of the room and turned slowly. The woman who lived here had beautiful furniture. And she smoked. He saw an ashtray on a little table next to a leather sofa. There were no cigarette butts in it, but there were faint traces of ashes. Paintings and photographs hung on the walls. Still lifes, vases of flowers, not very well done. Down in the lower right corner of one was a signature: Anna Ander 1958. A relative. Ander was an unusual surname. It figured in the history of Swedish crime, although he couldn’t recall how. He looked at one of the framed photographs. A Scanian farm. The picture was taken from above at an angle. Wallander guessed that the photographer had been standing on a roof or a tall ladder. He walked around the room, trying to feel her presence. He wondered why it was so difficult. Everything gave an impression of abandonment, he thought. A prim, pedantic abandonment. She isn’t here very often. She spends her time somewhere else.
He went over to her little desk next to the wall. Through the gap in the curtain he glimpsed a small yard. The window was draughty. He pulled out the chair, sat down and tried the biggest drawer. It was unlocked. A car passed by. Wallander saw the headlights catch a window and disappear. Then only the wind remained.
In the drawer were bundles of letters. He found his glasses and took out the top bundle. The sender was A. Ander, and the letter was sent from an address in Spain. He took out the letter and quickly scanned it. It was clear at once that Anna Ander was her mother. She was describing a trip. On the last page she wrote that she was on her way to Africa. The letter was dated April 1993. He put back the letter on the top of the bundle. The floorboards upstairs were creaking. He stuck one hand inside the drawer. Nothing. He started to go through the other drawers. Even paper can feel abandoned, he thought. He found nothing to make him take notice. It was too empty to be natural. Now he was convinced that she lived somewhere else. He kept going through the drawers. The floor upstairs creaked. It was 1.30 a.m.
She was driving through the night, feeling very tired. She had been listening to Katarina for hours. She often wondered about the weakness of these women. They let themselves be tortured, abused, murdered. Then if they survived, they sat night after night moaning about it. She didn’t understand them. As she drove through the night she actually felt contempt for them. They didn’t fight back.
It was 1 a.m. Normally she would have been asleep by now. She had to go to work early the next day. She had planned to sleep at Vollsjo, but in the end she dared to leave Katarina alone with her baby. She had convinced her to stay where she was just for a few more days, maybe a week. Tomorrow night they would call her mother again. Katarina would call and she would sit next to her. She didn’t think Katarina would say anything she wasn’t supposed to, but she wanted to be there anyway.
It was 1.10 a.m. when she drove into Ystad. She sensed the danger as soon as she turned down Liregatan and saw the parked car with its headlights off. She couldn’t turn around, she had to keep going. There were two men in the car, and she thought she could see a light in her flat too. Furious, she accelerated. The car leaped ahead, and she braked just as suddenly when she’d turned the corner. So they had found her. The ones who were watching Katarina’s house were in her flat. She felt dizzy, but she wasn’t afraid. There was nothing there that could lead them to Vollsjo. Nothing that told them who she was, nothing but her name.
She sat motionless. The wind tore at the car. She had turned off the engine and the headlights. She would have to return to Vollsjo. Now she knew why she had come here — to see if the men who were following her had got into her flat. But she was still way ahead of them. They would never catch up with her. She would keep unfolding her slips of paper as long as there was a single name left in the ledger.
She started the car, and decided to drive past her building one more time. The car was still parked there. She stopped 20 metres behind it without shutting off the engine. Even though it was some distance and the angle was difficult, she could see that the curtains in her house were drawn. Whoever was inside had turned on the light. They were searching but they wouldn’t find anything.
She forced herself to drive off slowly, without gunning the engine as she usually did. When she got back to Vollsjo, Katarina and her baby were asleep. Nothing would change. Everything would continue according to plan.
Wallander had returned to the bundle of letters when he heard quick steps on the stairs. He got up from his chair. It was Martinsson with Hoglund right behind.
“I think you’d better take a look at this,” Martinsson said. He was pale, his voice shaky.
He placed a worn notebook with a black cover on the desk. It was open. Wallander leaned over and put on his glasses. There was a column of names. Each had a number in the margin. He frowned.
“Go forward a few pages,” Martinsson said.
Wallander did as he said. The column of names was repeated. There were arrows, deletions, and changes, and it looked as if it was a draft of something.
“A couple more pages,” Martinsson said.
Wallander could hear he was shaken.
The column of names appeared again. This time there were fewer changes and deletions. Then he saw it.
He recognised the first name. Gosta Runfeldt. Then he found the others, Holger Eriksson and Eugen Blomberg. At the end of the rows there were dates written in. The dates of their deaths. Wallander looked up at Martinsson and Hoglund. Both of them were pale. There was no longer any doubt. They had come to the right place.
“There are more than 40 names here,” Wallander said. “You think she intends to kill them all?”
“At least we know who might be next,” Hoglund said. She pointed to a name.