“Mrs Taxell, we need your help. Can you answer some questions about Katarina for us?”
“How could she know anything about those horrible murders? She just had a baby, you know.”
“We don’t think she’s in any way involved,” Wallander said in a friendly voice. “But we have to look for information from many different sources.”
“What’s she supposed to know?”
“That’s what I’m hoping to find out.”
“Can’t you try to find her instead? I don’t understand what’s happened.”
“I’m sure she’s in no danger,” Wallander said, but he wasn’t entirely successful in hiding his doubt.
“She’s never done a thing like this before.”
“So you have no idea where she is, Mrs Taxell?”
“My name is Hedwig.”
“You have no idea where she is?”
“No. I can’t quite believe what is happening.”
“Does Katarina have a lot of friends?”
“No, she doesn’t, but the ones she has are close friends. I don’t know where she’d be other than with one of them.”
“Maybe there’s someone she didn’t see very often? Or someone she has met recently?”
“Who would that be?”
“Or maybe someone she met earlier? Someone she had started seeing again recently?”
“I would have known about it. We have a good relationship. Much better than most mothers and daughters.”
“I’m not implying that you had any secrets from each other,” Wallander said patiently. “But it’s rare that someone knows everything about another person. Do you know, for instance, who the father of her child is?”
Wallander hadn’t meant to throw the question in her face like that. She flinched.
“I’ve tried to get her to talk about it,” she said. “But she refuses.”
“So you don’t know who he is? You can’t even guess?”
“I didn’t even know she was seeing anyone.”
“You knew that she had a relationship with Eugen Blomberg?”
“I knew about it. I didn’t like him.”
“Why not? Was it because he was already married?”
“I didn’t know that until I saw the obituary in the paper. It was a shock.”
“Why didn’t you like him?”
“I don’t know. He was unpleasant.”
“Did you know that he had abused Katarina?”
Her horror was genuine. For a moment Wallander felt sorry for her. Her world was threatening to collapse. She was being forced to admit that there was a lot she didn’t know about her daughter, that the intimacy she thought they shared was hardly more than a shell.
“Did he hit her?”
“Worse than that. He abused her in many different ways.”
She stared at him in disbelief, but saw that he was telling the truth. She couldn’t defend herself.
“It’s possible that Eugen Blomberg is the father of her child, even though they weren’t seeing each other.”
She shook her head slowly and said nothing. Wallander looked at Hoglund. She nodded. He took this to mean that he should go on. Birch stood motionless in the background.
“Her friends,” Wallander said. “We need to talk to them.”
“I’ve already told you who they are. And you’ve already talked to them.”
She rattled off three names. Birch nodded in the background.
“There are no others?”
“No.”
“Does she belong to any clubs?”
“No.”
“Has she taken any holidays abroad?”
“We usually go somewhere once a year, in February. To Madeira, Morocco, Tunisia.”
“Does she have any hobbies?”
“She reads a lot, she likes to listen to music. Her hair products business takes up most of her time. She works hard.”
“Nothing else?”
“Sometimes she plays badminton.”
“Who with? One of the three girlfriends?”
“With a teacher. I think her name is Carlman. But I’ve never met her.”
Wallander didn’t know if this was important. At least it was a new name.
“Do they work at the same school?”
“Not any more. They did in the past, a few years ago.”
“You don’t remember her first name?”
“I’ve never met her.”
“Where did they usually play?”
“At Victoria Stadium. It’s within walking distance of her flat.”
Birch discreetly went into the hall. Wallander knew that he would trace the woman named Carlman. It took him less than five minutes. He came back and signalled to Wallander, who stood up and went out to the hall. In the meantime Hoglund tried to clarify what Mrs Taxell really knew about her daughter’s relationship with Eugen Blomberg.
“That was easy,” Birch said. “Annika Carlman. She’s the one who reserves and pays for the court. I have her address. It’s not far from here.”
“Let’s go there,” Wallander said.
He went back into the room.
“Your daughter’s friend’s name is Annika Carlman,” he said. “She lives on Bankgatan.”
“I’ve never heard her first name before,” Mrs Taxell said.
“We’ll leave you two alone for a while,” Wallander went on. “We need to talk to her right away.”
It took less than ten minutes to get there. It was 6.30 p.m. Annika Carlman lived in a turn-of-the-century block of flats. Birch picked up the security phone. A man’s voice answered, and Birch identified himself. The door opened. A door on the second floor stood open. A man stood there waiting for them. He introduced himself.
“I’m Annika’s husband,” he said. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” Birch said. “We just need to ask a few questions.”
He invited them in. The flat was big and lavishly furnished. Somewhere in another room they could hear music and children’s voices. A moment later Annika Carlman came in. She was tall, and was dressed in gym gear.
“These police officers want to talk to you.”
“We need to ask some questions about Katarina Taxell,” Wallander said.
They sat down in a room lined with books. Wallander wondered whether Annika Carlman’s husband was also a teacher.
He got right to the point.
“How well do you know Katarina Taxell?”
“We played badminton together, but we didn’t socialise.”
“But you do know that she just had a baby?”
“We haven’t played badminton for five months for precisely that reason.”
“Were you going to start up again?”
“We’d agreed she would give me a call.”
Wallander mentioned the names of Katarina’s three girlfriends.
“I don’t know them. We just played badminton.”
“When did you start playing?”
“About five years ago. We were teachers at the same school.”
“Is it really possible to play badminton regularly with someone for five years without getting to know her?”
“Perfectly possible, yes.”
Wallander pondered how to continue. Annika Carlman gave clear, concise answers. And yet he could feel that they were moving away from something.
“You never saw her together with anyone else?”
“Man or woman?”
“Let’s start with a man.”
“No.”
“Not even when you were working together?”
“She kept to herself. There was one teacher who seemed interested in her. She acted very cold towards him, you might almost say hostile. But she was good with the students. She was smart. A stubborn and smart teacher.”
“Did you ever see her with a woman?”
Wallander had given up hope in the value of that question before he even asked it. But he had resigned himself too soon.
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” she replied. “About three years ago.”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know her name. But I know what she does. It was a very peculiar situation.”