The Fifth Woman by Henning Mankell

who came to see her back then, after the building work, was amazed at how beautiful it had become. It was the same old house, and yet completely different. Light flooded in from the new windows. If she wanted it dark, she could close the massive oak shutters on the outside of the house. She had exposed the roof beams and ripped up the old floors. Someone told her it looked like a church nave.
    After that she had begun to regard the room as her sanctuary. When she was there alone she was in the centre of the world. She could feel completely calm, far from the dangers that threatened her.
    There had been times when she rarely visited her cathedral. The routine of her life always fluctuated. On occasion she had asked herself whether she shouldn’t get rid of the house. There were far too many memories that the sledge-hammers could never demolish. But she couldn’t leave the room with the huge, looming baking oven, the white boulder she had kept. It had become a part of her. Sometimes she saw it as the last bastion she had left to defend in her life.
    Then the letter had arrived from Africa.
    After that, everything changed.
    She never again considered abandoning her house.
    On Wednesday, 28 September, she arrived in Vollsjö just after 3 p.m. She had driven from Hässleholm, and before she drove to her house on the outskirts of town, she stopped and bought supplies. She knew what she needed. To be on the safe side, she had bought an extra package of straws. The shopkeeper nodded to her. She smiled back and they exchanged a few words about the weather, and about the terrible ferry accident. She paid and drove off.
    Her closest neighbours weren’t there. They were German, lived in Hamburg, and only came up to Skåne for the month of July. When they were there they greeted one another, but had no other contact.
    She unlocked the front door, and stood quite still in the hall, listening. Then she went into the big room and stood motionless next to the baking oven. Everything was quiet. As quiet as she wanted the world to be.
    The man lying down there inside the oven couldn’t hear her. She knew he was alive, but she had no wish to be bothered by the sound of his breathing. Or sobbing.
    She thought of the impulse that had led her to this unexpected conclusion. It began when she had decided to keep the house. And it was there when she decided to leave the oven untouched. Only later, when the letter from Africa came and she realised what she had to do, had the oven revealed its true purpose.
    She was interrupted by the alarm on her watch. In an hour her guests would arrive. Before then she would have to give the man in the oven his food. He had been there for five days. Soon he would be so weak that he wouldn’t be able to put up any resistance. She took her schedule from her handbag and saw that she had time off from next Sunday afternoon until Tuesday morning. That’s when it would be. She would take him out and tell him what had happened.
    She had not yet decided how she was going to kill him. There were several possibilities, but she still had plenty of time. She would think about what he had done and then resolve how he was supposed to die.
    She went into the kitchen and heated the soup. Because she was careful about hygiene, she washed the plastic cup and lid that she used when she fed him. She poured water into another cup. Each day she reduced the amount she gave him. He would get no more than was necessary to keep him alive. When she finished preparing the meal, she pulled on a pair of latex gloves, splashed a few drops of perfume behind her ears, and went to the oven. At its back was a hole, hidden behind some loose stones. It was like a tunnel, almost a metre long, that she could carefully pull out. Before she’d put him in there, she had installed a powerful loudspeaker and then filled in the hole. When she played music at full volume, no sound seeped out.
    She leaned forwards so she could see him. When she put her hand