If Runfeldt had left on the trip, he would have had to take his passport with him. Wallander searched through the desk drawers, which weren’t locked. In one of them was an old herbarium. He opened it. Gosta Runfeldt 1955. Even during his school days he had pressed flowers. Wallander looked at a 40-year-old cornflower. The blue colour was still present, or a pale memory of it. He had pressed flowers himself once. He kept on searching. He couldn’t find a passport. He frowned. A suitcase was gone, and the passport too. He hadn’t found the tickets, either. He left the study and sat down in an armchair in the living room. Sometimes changing places helped him to think. There were plenty of signs that Runfeldt had actually left his flat with his passport, tickets, and a packed suitcase.
He let his mind wander. Could something have happened on the way to Copenhagen? Could he have fallen into the sea from one of the ferries? If that had happened then his suitcase would have been found. He pulled out one of the gift cards he had in his pocket. He had written the phone number of the shop on it. He went to the kitchen to make the call. Through the window he could see the tall grain lift in Ystad harbour. One of the ferries to Poland was on its way out past the stone jetty. Vanja Andersson answered the phone.
“I’m still at the flat,” he said. “I’ve got a couple of questions. Did he tell you how he was travelling to Copenhagen?”
Her reply was precise.
“He always went via Limhamn and Dragor.”
So now he knew that much.
“Do you know how many suitcases he owned?”
“No. How should I know that?”
Wallander saw that he must ask the question in a different way.
“What did his suitcase look like?”
“He didn’t usually take a lot of luggage,” she replied. “He knew how to travel light. He had a shoulder bag and a larger suitcase with wheels.”
“What colour was it?”
“It was black.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes, I am. I’m sure. I picked him up a few times after his trips. At the train station or at Sturup Airport. Gosta never threw anything away. If he’d had to buy a new suitcase I would have known about it, because he would have complained about how expensive it was. He could be stingy sometimes.”
But the trip to Nairobi cost 30,000 kronor, Wallander thought. And that money was just thrown away. I’m sure it wasn’t voluntarily. He told her he’d drop off the keys within half an hour.
After he hung up he thought about what she had said. A black suitcase. The two he had found in the wardrobe were grey. He hadn’t seen a shoulder bag either. Besides, now he knew that Runfeldt travelled out into the world via Limhamn. He stood by the window and looked over the rooftops. The Poland ferry was gone.
It doesn’t make sense, he thought. There may have been an accident. But even that wasn’t certain. To follow up on one of the most important questions, he called information and asked for the number of the ferry line between Limhamn and Dragor. He was lucky and got the person who was responsible for lost property on the ferries. The man was Danish. Wallander told him who he was and asked about a black suitcase. He told him the date. Then he waited. It took a few minutes before the Dane, who had introduced himself as Mogensen, came back.
“Nothing,” he said.
Wallander tried to think. Then he asked his question.
“Do people ever disappear from your boats? Fall overboard?”
“Hardly ever,” Mogensen replied. Wallander thought he sounded convincing.
“But it does happen?”
“It happens in all boat traffic,” said Mogensen. “People commit suicide. People get drunk. Some are mad and try to balance on the railing. But it doesn’t happen often.”
“Are people who fall overboard usually recovered? Either drowned or alive?”
“Most of them float ashore, dead,” Mogensen answered. “Some get caught in fishing nets. Only a few disappear completely.”
Wallander had no more questions. He thanked the man for his help and said goodbye.
He had nothing tangible to go on, and yet now he was convinced that Runfeldt had never gone to Copenhagen. He had packed his bag, taken his passport and ticket, and left his flat. Then he had disappeared.
Wallander thought about the puddle of blood inside the florist’s shop. What did that mean? Maybe they had it all wrong. It might well be that the break-in was no mistake.
He paced around the flat, trying to understand. The telephone in the kitchen rang, making him jump. He hurried over to answer it. It was Hansson, calling from Eriksson’s.
“I heard from Martinsson that Runfeldt has disappeared,” he said.
“He’s not here, at any rate,” Wallander answered.
“You have any ideas?”
“No. I think he did intend to take his trip, but something prevented him.”
“You think there’s a connection?”
Wallander thought about it. What did he actually believe? He didn’t know.
“We can’t rule out the possibility,” was all he said.
He asked what had happened out at the farm, but Hansson had nothing new to report. After he hung up, Wallander walked through the flat once more. He had a feeling that there was something he should be noticing. Finally he gave up. He looked through the post out in the hall. There was the letter from the travel agency. An electricity bill. There was also a receipt for a parcel from a mail-order company in Boras. It had to be paid for at the post office. Wallander stuck the slip in his pocket.
Vanja Andersson was waiting for him when he arrived with the keys. He asked her to get in touch with him if she thought of anything else that might be important. Then he drove to the station. He left the slip with Ebba and asked her to have someone pick up the parcel. At 1 p.m. he closed the door to his office. He was hungry. But he was more anxious than hungry. He recognised the feeling. He knew what it meant.
He doubted that they would find Gosta Runfeldt alive.
CHAPTER 8
At midnight, Ylva Brink finally sat down to have a cup of coffee. She was one of two midwives working the night of 30 September in the maternity ward of Ystad’s hospital. Her colleague, Lena Soderstrom, was with a woman who had just started to have contractions. It had been a busy night — without drama, but with a steady stream of tasks that had to be carried out.
They were understaffed. Two midwives and two nurses had to handle all the work. There was an obstetrician they could call if there was serious haemorrhaging or any other complication, but otherwise they were on their own. It used to be worse, thought Ylva Brink as she sat down on the sofa with her coffee. A few years ago she had been the only midwife on duty all night long, and sometimes this had resulted in difficulties. They had finally managed to talk some sense into the hospital administration and push through their demand to have at least two midwives on every night.
Her office was in the middle of a large ward. The glass walls allowed her to see what was going on outside. In the daytime there was constant activity, but at night, everything was different. She liked working nights. A lot of her colleagues preferred other shifts. They had families, and they couldn’t get enough sleep during the day. But Ylva Brink’s children were grown up, and her husband was chief engineer on an oil tanker that sailed between ports in the Middle East and Asia. For her it was peaceful to work while everyone else was asleep.
She drank her coffee with pleasure and took a piece of sugar cake from a tray on her desk. One of the nurses came in and sat down, and then the other one joined them. A radio was playing softly in the corner. They talked about autumn and the persistent rain. One of the nurses had heard from her mother, who could predict the weather, that it was going to be a long, cold winter.