An Event in Autumn: A Kurt Wallander Mystery (7 page)

“How did it go?”

“As expected,” said Wallander. “We have too much to do, and so we should do as little as we can.”

“That was an unjust comment,” said Martinson.

“Of course it was unjust. Who said that police work had anything to do with justice?”

Linda shook her head and left.

“I didn’t understand that last comment you made,” said Martinson.

“Neither did I,” said Wallander cheerfully. “But it does no harm to give the younger generation something to think about.”

They sat down at the table. Martinson contacted Stefan Lindman on the intercom; he arrived after a few minutes, carrying a file.

“Missing persons,” said Wallander. “Nothing fascinates the public at large like people who go up in smoke. People who go out to buy a bottle of milk and never come back. Or visit a girlfriend and are never seen again. Young women who go missing never fail to stimulate the general public’s imagination. I still remember a girl called Ulla who disappeared after a dance in Sundbyberg sometime
in the fifties. She was never seen again. I can still conjure up her face whenever I think about her.”

“There are some statistics,” said Stefan Lindman. “They’re pretty reliable, given that they come from the police … Most people reported as missing usually turn up again very soon—after just a couple of days, or maybe a week. Only a few never return.”

He opened the file.

“I’ve dug down into the past,” he said. “In order to cover the time the medics think we should be looking at, I’ve fished out information relevant to the period 1935 to 1955. Our registers—even the old ones and those dealing with unsolved investigations at various points in time—are pretty detailed. I think I’ve produced quite a good picture of the overall situation, and the missing women who might be of interest.”

Wallander leaned forward over the table.

“So what have you to tell us?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

Stefan Lindman nodded.

“Your ears are not deceiving you. During the period of time in question there wasn’t a single woman in the appropriate age range who was reported as missing in this area. Nor was there anybody in Malmö. I thought I’d found a woman who might be the one we were after—a forty-nine-year-old from Svedala who went missing in December 1942. But she turned up again a few years later.
She had left her husband and gone off with a soldier from Stockholm who had been stationed here. But she grew tired of him, the passion cooled down, and she came back home. There’s nothing at all apart from her.”

They thought over what Stefan Lindman had said, in silence.

“So nobody is reported missing,” said Martinson after a while. “But a woman was buried in a garden. She had been murdered. Somebody must have missed her.”

“She could have come from somewhere else,” said Lindman. “A list of all the women of the appropriate age in Sweden who have gone missing during those years would produce a quite different result, naturally. Besides, there was a war on, and a lot of people were constantly on the move. Including refugees, who were not always registered officially, as they ought to have been.”

Wallander followed a different line of thought.

“This is how I see it,” he said. “We don’t know who the woman is—but we do know where she was buried. Somebody picked up a spade and buried her. There’s no reason to believe that was anybody but the man who killed her. Or the woman—that’s not impossible of course. That ought to be our starting point. Who held the spade? Why was the body buried in Karl Eriksson’s garden?”

“Not Karl Eriksson’s garden,” said Martinson. “Ludvig Hansson’s garden.”

Wallander nodded.

“That’s where we must start,” he said. “With Ludwig Hansson and his family who owned the place in those days. All those who were alive then are now dead. Apart from those who were children at the time. That’s where we should begin: with Ludvig Hansson’s children.”

“Shall I carry on searching?” wondered Lindman. “With the rest of Sweden? All missing women between 1935 and 1955?”

“Yes,” said Wallander. “That woman must have been reported missing somewhere or other. She must be there somewhere.”

It took Wallander three days to trace Ludvig Hansson’s only child who was still in the land of the living. Meanwhile, Stefan Lindman had begun to make a list of Swedish women who had gone missing during the years in question, and had found a couple who at least were about the right age. But what made him and his colleagues doubtful was that both women came from the north of Sweden: one of them lived in Timrå just outside Sundsvall when she disappeared, and the other, Maria Teresa Arbåge, had been living in Luleå when she was reported missing.

Martinson had been scouring the land register and was able to confirm that the farm Ludvig Hansson had sold had been in his family since the middle of the nineteenth
century. The first Hansson had actually been called Hansen, and came from close to the Småland border, some way north of Ystad. On several occasions Wallander and Martinson discussed why the family property had suddenly been sold. Could that be linked with a motive that could throw light on the woman in the garden?

Linda had also come up with a suggestion that Wallander had recognized, somewhat reluctantly, was an excellent one. She proposed trying to track down old aerial photographs of the property, older than the one hanging on the wall of the house in Löderup. Had the garden undergone change? If so, when? And what had happened to the wing that had originally been attached to the house, but now no longer existed?

Wallander had delved into population registers and in the end discovered the only one of Ludvig Hansson’s four children who was still alive. It was a woman by the name of Kristina, who was born in 1937. Wallander established that she was an afterthought, born to Ludvig and his wife Alma several years after the rest of her siblings. Kristina had eventually married and changed her surname to Fredberg. She now lived in Malmö, and Wallander felt a pang of excitement when he picked up the telephone and rang her.

It was a young woman who answered. He said his name and informed her that he was a police officer, and asked to speak to Kristina. The woman asked him to wait.

Kristina Fredberg had a friendly voice. Wallander
explained the situation, and said he needed to talk to her in connection with the investigation into the discovery that had been made in the garden.

“I’ve read about it in the newspaper,” she said. “I find it hard to believe that such a thing could happen in the garden where I played as a child. Have you no idea at all whose body it is?”

“No.”

“I hardly think I have anything of significance to tell you.”

“I need to create a picture. An overall picture.”

“You’re welcome to come around whenever you like,” she said. “I have all the time in the world. I’m a widow. My husband died two years ago. He had cancer. It went quickly.”

“Was it your daughter who answered the phone?”

“Lena. She’s my youngest. The entry code number is 1225.”

They agreed that Wallander would drive to central Malmö to meet her that same day. Without really knowing why, he telephoned Linda and asked her if she would like to accompany him. She had the day off after working two successive nights, and he woke her up. But, unlike her father, she seldom became angry when her beauty sleep was interrupted. They agreed that he would collect her an hour later, at eleven o’clock.

It was wet and windy when they drove out to Malmö. Wallander listened to a cassette recording of
La bohème
.
As Linda was not especially keen on opera he had turned the volume down. When they came to Svedala, Wallander switched the music off altogether.

“Nobelvägen,” he said. “She lives right in the center.”

“Have we time to stay on for a bit afterward?” asked Linda. “I want to do some shopping. It’s ages since I’ve been to any decent shops.”

“What kind of shopping?”

“Clothes. I want to buy a sweater. As consolation.”

“Consolation for what?”

“For feeling rather lonely.”

“How are things with you and Stefan?”

“It’s going well. But one can feel lonely at times, even so.”

Wallander said nothing. He knew all too well what Linda was talking about.

He parked the car at Triangeln. The wind was bitter while they were finding their way to the house. Wallander had written the entry code number on the back of his hand.

Kristina Fredberg’s apartment was on the top floor. There was no elevator. Wallander was panting heavily by the time they reached the top of the stairs. Linda stared sternly at him.

“You’ll have a heart attack if you don’t start exercising soon.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my heart. I’ve been on an exercise bike with wires attached to my body, and
the result was good. And my average blood pressure is 135 over 80. That’s also good. And my blood lipids are as they should be. Well, almost. I have my diabetes under control. In addition to all that I have my prostate checked once a year. Will that do, or would you like all that information in writing?”

“You’re mad,” said Linda. “But quite funny. Ring the doorbell now.”

Kristina Fredberg looked distinctly youthful. Wallander found it difficult to believe that she was sixty-five years old. He’d have guessed just over fifty if he hadn’t known.

She invited them into her living room. A tray with coffee and biscuits was on the table. They had just sat down when a woman of Linda’s age came in through the door. She introduced herself as Lena. Wallander couldn’t remember when he had last seen such a beautiful woman. She looked like her mother, and spoke like her, with the same voice and a smile that gave Wallander a forbidden urge to touch her.

“Do you mind if I sit in and listen?” she asked. “From pure curiosity.”

“Not at all,” said Wallander.

She sat down on the sofa next to her mother. Wallander couldn’t resist looking at her legs. Then he noticed that Linda was frowning at him. Why did I ask her to come with me? he wondered. To give her even more reason to criticize me?

Kristina Fredberg served coffee. Wallander took out
his notebook and pencil. But needless to say, he had forgotten his glasses. He put the notebook back into his pocket.

“You were born in 1937,” he said. “You were the youngest of four siblings.”

“I was an afterthought, yes. I don’t think I was really wanted. More of a mistake.”

“Why do you think that?”

“It’s the sort of thing children sense. But nobody ever said anything.”

“And you grew up there at the house in Löderup?”

“Yes and no. Until 1942, in November, we lived there all the year round. Then Mum and I and my brothers and sister moved to Malmö for a few years.”

“Why?”

Wallander noticed that she hesitated very slightly before answering.

“My mother and father had fallen out. But they didn’t divorce. I don’t know what happened. We lived in a flat in Limhamn for a few years. Then, in the spring of 1945, we moved back to Löderup. They had become reconciled. When she was older, I tried to ask my mother why they had fallen out, but she didn’t want to talk about it. I asked my siblings as well. We don’t think anything special happened. The marriage just suddenly fell apart. My mother moved out and took her children with her. But then they became friends again and remained together until she died. I remember my parents as people who
liked one another. What happened when I was a little girl during the war is now just a vague memory. An unpleasant memory.”

“So your father remained living at the farm in Löderup during those years, did he?”

“He had animals that needed looking after. My elder brother said that he employed two farmhands. One of them came from Denmark, as a refugee. But nobody knows any details. My father wasn’t very talkative.”

Wallander thought for a moment. There was an obvious question to ask.

“So he hadn’t met another woman?”

“No.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I just know.”

“Can you explain in a little more detail?”

“My mother would never have moved back to the house if my father had had a lover. And it wouldn’t have been possible to keep it secret.”

“My experience is that you can have secrets no matter where you live.”

Wallander noticed that Linda raised her eyebrows with interest.

“No doubt you can. But not from my mother. Her intuition was something I’ve never come across in any other person.”

“Apart from me,” said her daughter Lena.

“That’s right. You’ve inherited it from your grandmother. Nobody can hide the truth from you either.”

Kristina Fredberg sounded convincing. Wallander was sure that she was not intentionally trying to conceal anything that could be of value to the police. But could she really be so certain about what her father had been doing when he lived alone at the farm for those three years during the war?

“Those farmhands,” he said. “One came from Denmark, did he? What was his name?”

“Jörgen. I remember that. But he’s dead. He had some illness or other—something to do with his kidneys, I believe. He died in the fifties.”

“But there was a second one?”

“So my brother Ernst maintained. I never heard a name.”

“Perhaps there are pictures? Or records of wage payments?”

“I think my father paid cash in hand. And I’ve never seen any photographs.”

Wallander served himself some more coffee.

“Could the other farmhand have been a woman?” asked Linda suddenly.

As usual Wallander was annoyed when he felt that she was trespassing on his territory. She was welcome to be present and learn a thing or two, but she should avoid taking any initiatives without consulting him first.

“No,” said Kristina Fredberg. “There were no female farmhands in those days. Housekeepers, perhaps; but not farmhands. I’m absolutely convinced that my father did not have an affair with any other woman. I don’t know who it is lying buried in the garden. The very thought makes me shudder. But I’m sure my father had nothing to do with what happened. Even if he lived there at the time.”