He pushed back the chair and closed the last drawer. Nothing. He didn’t know much more than he had before. He frowned. Something didn’t add up. If her decision to leave was sudden, and he was convinced that it had been, then she wouldn’t have had time to take along everything that might give away her secrets. She had the diaries within easy reach. But there is almost always a messy side to a person’s life. Here there was nothing. He stood up and cautiously moved the desk away from the wall. Nothing was fastened to the back. He sat down in the chair again, thinking hard. There was something he had noticed. Something that only now came back to him. He tried to coax the image out. Not the photographs. Not the letters either. What was it then? The report cards? The rental contract? The bills from her credit card company? None of those. What was left?
There’s nothing else but the furniture, he thought. Then it came to him. It was something about the small drawers. He pulled one of them out again, then the next, and compared them. Then he took them all the way out and looked inside. There was nothing there either. He put the drawers back in and pulled out the one on the top left, and then the second. That’s when he discovered it. The drawers were not equally deep. He pulled out the smaller one and turned it around. There was another opening. It was a double drawer. It had a secret compartment in the back. There was only one thing inside. He took it out and put it on the desk.
It was a timetable for Swedish Railways, from the spring of 1991. The trains between Malmo and Stockholm. He took out the other drawers, one by one. He found another secret compartment. It was empty. He leaned back in his chair and thought about the timetable. Why was it important? It was even harder to understand why it had been put into a secret compartment. But it couldn’t have ended up there by mistake.
Birch came into the room.
“Take a look at this,” Wallander said, pointing at the timetable. “This was in Katarina Taxell’s secret hiding place.”
“A timetable?”
Wallander nodded. “I don’t get it,” he said.
He leafed through it, page by page. Birch had pulled up a chair and sat down next to him. Wallander turned the pages. Nothing was written on it, no page had been pressed down and fell open by itself. It was only when he came to the next to last page that he stopped. Birch saw it too. A departure time from Nassjo was underlined. Nassjo to Malmo. Departure at 16.00. Arrival in Lund at 18.42, Malmo at 18.57. Nassjo 16.00. Someone had underlined the whole row.
Wallander looked at Birch. “Does that tell you anything?”
“Not a thing.”
Wallander put down the timetable.
“Does Katarina Taxell have something to do with Nassjo?” Birch asked.
“Not as far as I know,” Wallander said. “But it’s possible that she does. Our biggest problem right now is that everything seems to be possible. We can’t tell what is important and what isn’t.”
Wallander had acquired several plastic bags from the forensic technicians who had gone through the flat earlier in the day, searching for fingerprints that didn’t belong to Katarina Taxell or her mother. He put the timetable in one of them.
“I’m taking this along,” he said, “if you have no objections.”
Birch shrugged.
“You can’t even use it to tell when the trains go,” he said. “It expired three years ago.”
“I rarely take the train,” Wallander said.
“It can be relaxing,” Birch said. “I prefer taking the train to flying. You get time to yourself.”
Wallander thought about his most recent train trip, from Almhult. Birch was right. During the journey he had managed to fall asleep for a while.
“I think it’s time for me to go back to Ystad.”
“We’re not going to put out an APB for Katarina Taxell and her baby?”
“Not yet.”
They left the flat. Birch locked up. The wind was coming in gusts, and it was cold. They said goodbye at Wallander’s car.
“What should we do about her surveillance?” Birch asked.
Wallander thought for a moment.
“Keep it up for the time being,” he said. “Only don’t forget the back this time.”
“What do you think might happen?”
“I don’t know. But someone who has run away might decide to return.”
He drove out of the city. Autumn pressed in all around the car. He switched on the heater, but he was still cold.
What are we going to do now? he asked himself. Katarina Taxell is missing. After a long day in Lund I’m going back to Ystad with an old Swedish Railways timetable in a plastic bag.
But he knew that they had taken an important step forward that day. Eriksson did know Krista Haberman. They knew that there was a connection between the three men who had been murdered. Involuntarily he accelerated. He wanted to find out what Hamren had discovered. When he reached the exit for Sturup Airport he called Ystad. He got hold of Svedberg. The first thing he asked about was Terese.
“She’s getting a lot of support from the school,” Svedberg said. “Especially from the other students. But it’s going to take time.”
“And Martinsson?”
“He’s depressed. He’s talking about quitting.”
“I know.”
“You’re the only one who can talk him out of it.”
“I will.”
He asked if anything important had happened. Svedberg had just arrived at the station himself after sitting in on a meeting with Akeson about obtaining the investigative material on the drowning of Runfeldt’s wife in Almhult.
Wallander asked him to call a meeting of the investigative team for 10 p.m.
“Have you seen Hamren?” was his last question.
“He’s sitting with Hansson going over the material on Krista Haberman. That was apparently something you said was urgent.”
“If they could finish by 10 p.m., I’d be grateful.”
“Are they supposed to find Krista Haberman by then?” Svedberg asked.
“Not exactly. But not far from it, either.”
Wallander put the phone down on the seat next to him. He thought about Katarina Taxell’s secret drawer, which contained an old timetable. He didn’t understand it. Not at all.
At 10 p.m. they were all assembled. Only Martinsson was missing. They began by talking about what had happened that morning. Everyone knew by then that Martinsson had decided to resign from the force.
“I’ll talk to him,” Wallander said. “I’ll find out if he’s really made up his mind. If he has, then of course no-one is going to stop him.”
Wallander gave a brief summary of what had happened in Lund. They considered various explanations as to why Taxell had run away. They also asked themselves if it might be possible to track down the red car. How many red Golfs were there in Skane?
“A woman with a newborn baby can’t disappear without a trace,” Wallander said at last. “It’d be best for us to be patient.”
He looked at Hansson and Hamren.
“The disappearance of Krista Haberman,” he said.
Hansson nodded to Hamren.
“You wanted to know the details surrounding the disappearance itself,” he said. “The last time she was seen was in Svenstavik on Tuesday, 22 October 1967. She went for a walk through town. It wasn’t unusual for her to be out walking. A lumberjack coming from the station on his bike saw her. It was about 5 p.m. and it was already dark. There are several witnesses who said they’d seen a strange car in town that evening. That’s all.”
They sat in silence.
“Did anyone mention the make of the car?” Wallander asked at last.