Afterwards Wallander would recall the next few hours as an eternal chaos. He had to try to handle a lot of things at once. On the platform, no-one understood what he was talking about. Passengers were swarming around him. Slowly Hansson began to recover, but Martinsson was still unconscious. Wallander raged at the ambulance that took so long to arrive, and not until some bewildered Hassleholm police appeared on the platform did he start to make some sense of the situation.
Martinsson’s breathing was steady. By the time the ambulance attendants carried him off, Hansson had managed to get to his feet again, and he went with them to the hospital. Wallander explained to the police officers that they had been trying to arrest a female conductor, but that she had escaped.
By that time the train had left. Wallander wondered whether Grunden had boarded it. Did he have any idea how close to death he had come? Wallander realised that no-one understood what he was talking about. Only his identification made them accept that he was a policeman and not a lunatic.
Now he had to find where Yvonne Ander had gone. He called Hoglund and told her what had happened. She would see to it that they were prepared if she came back to Vollsjo. The flat in Ystad was already under surveillance, but Wallander didn’t think that she would go there. They were hot on her heels, and they wouldn’t give up until they caught her. Where could she go? He couldn’t ignore the possibility that she would simply take flight, but it didn’t seem likely. She planned everything. Wallander told Hoglund to ask Katarina Taxell one question. Did Yvonne Ander have another hideout?
“I think she always has an escape route,” Wallander said. “She may have mentioned an address, a location.”
“What about Taxell’s flat in Lund?”
Wallander saw that she might be right.
“Call up Birch. Ask him to check.”
“She has keys to it,” Hoglund said. “Katarina told me so.”
Wallander was escorted to the hospital by a police car. Hansson lay on a stretcher. His scrotum was swollen and he would be kept in for observation. Martinsson was still unconscious. A doctor diagnosed a severe concussion.
“The man who hit him must have been extremely strong,” the doctor said.
“You’re right,” said Wallander, “except that the man was a woman.”
He left the hospital. Where had she gone? Something was nagging at Wallander’s subconscious. Something that could give him the answer to where she was or at least where she might be headed. Then he remembered what it was. He stood quite still outside the hospital. Nyberg had been absolutely clear on something. The fingerprints in the tower must have been put there later. Yvonne Ander might be similar to him. In tense situations she sought out solitude. A place where she could take stock, come to a decision. All her actions gave the impression of detailed planning and precise timetables. Now her ordered life had come crashing down around her. He decided it was worth a try. The site was sealed off, of course, but Hansson had told him that the work wouldn’t be resumed until they got the extra help they needed. Wallander knew that she could reach the spot by the same route she had used before.
Wallander said goodbye to the police who had helped him and promised to give them a full report on the investigation later that day. No real damage had been done. The officers who had been admitted to the hospital would soon be on their feet again.
Wallander got into his car and called Hoglund again. He didn’t tell her what it was about, just that he wanted her to meet him at the turn-off to Eriksson’s farm.
It was after 10 a.m. when Wallander arrived in Lodinge. Hoglund was standing by her car waiting for him. They drove the last stretch up to the farmhouse in Wallander’s car. He stopped 100 metres from the house.
“I might be wrong,” he said. “But there’s a chance she might come back here to the bird tower. She’s been here before.” He reminded her of what Nyberg said about the fingerprints.
“What would she be doing here?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but she’s on the run. She needs to make some kind of decision. And we know that she’s been here before.”
They got out of the car. The wind was biting.
“We found the hospital uniform,” she said. “And a plastic bag with underpants in it. We can assume that Runfeldt was held captive at Vollsjo.”
They were approaching the house.
“What do we do if she’s up in the tower?”
“We take her. I’ll go around the other side of the hill. If she comes here, that’s where she’ll park her car. You walk down the path. This time we’ll have our guns drawn.”
“I don’t think she’ll come,” Hoglund said.
Wallander didn’t reply. He knew there was a good chance she was right.
They found some shelter in the courtyard. The crime-scene tape around the ditch where they had been digging for Krista Haberman’s remains had been torn away in the wind. The tower was empty. It stood out sharply in the autumn light.
“Let’s wait a while anyway,” Wallander said. “If she comes it’ll be soon.”
“There’s an APB out for her,” she said. “If we don’t find her, she’ll be hunted all over the country.” They stood silent for a moment. The wind tore at their clothes.
“What is it that drives her?” she asked.
“She’s probably the only one who can answer that question. But shouldn’t we assume that she was abused too?”
Hoglund didn’t reply.
“I believe she’s a lonely person,” Wallander said. “And she thinks the purpose of her life is a calling to kill on behalf of others.”
“Once I thought we were out after a mercenary,” she said. “And now we’re waiting for a female conductor to appear in a tower built for watching birds.”
“That mercenary angle might not have been so far-fetched,” Wallander said thoughtfully. “She’s a woman, and she doesn’t get paid for killing as far as we know. But there’s something that reminds me of what we initially believed that we were dealing with.”
“Katarina Taxell said that she got to know her through a group of women who met at Vollsjo. But their first encounter was on a train. You were right about that. Apparently she asked about a bruise Taxell had on her temple. It was Eugen Blomberg who had abused her. I never found out exactly how it all happened, but she confirmed that Yvonne Ander had previously worked in a hospital and also as an ambulance medic. She saw plenty of abused women. Later she got in contact with them and invited them to Vollsjo. You might call it an extremely informal support group. She found out the names of the men who had abused the women. Katarina acknowledged that it was Yvonne Ander who visited her at the hospital. On the second visit she gave Ander the father’s name. Eugen Blomberg.”
“That signed his death warrant,” Wallander said. “I also think she’s been preparing this for a long time. Something happened that triggered it all. And neither you nor I can know what that was.”
“Does she know it herself?”
“We have to suppose that she does. If she isn’t completely insane.”
They waited. The wind came and went in strong gusts. A police car drove up to the entrance of the courtyard. Wallander asked them not to come back until further notice. He gave no explanation, but he was unequivocal. They kept on waiting. Neither of them had anything to say.
At 10.45 a.m. Wallander cautiously put a hand on her shoulder.
“There she is,” he whispered.
Hoglund looked. A person had appeared up by the hill. It had to be Yvonne Ander. She stood there and looked around. Then she began to climb the stairs to the tower.
“It’ll take me 20 minutes to go around to the back of the tower,” Wallander said. “Then you start to walk down the path. I’ll be behind her if she tries to escape.”
“What happens if she attacks me? Then I’ll have to shoot.”
“I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen. I’ll be there.”
He ran to the car and drove as fast as he could to the tractor path that led up the back of the hill. He didn’t dare drive all the way, so he go out and ran. It took longer than he had calculated. A car was parked at the top of the tractor path. Also a Golf, but a black one. The phone rang in Wallander’s jacket pocket. He stopped. It might be Hoglund. He answered and kept walking along the tractor path.