The Troubled Man

1

The year Kurt Wallander celebrated his fifty-fifth birthday, he fulfilled a long-held dream. Ever since his divorce from Mona fifteen years earlier, he had intended to leave his apartment in Mariagatan, where so many unpleasant memories were etched into the walls, and move out to the country. Every time he came home in the evening after a stressful and depressing workday, he was reminded that once upon a time he had lived there with a family. Now the furniture stared at him as if accusing him of desertion.

He could never reconcile himself to living there until he became so old that he might not be able to look after himself anymore. Although he had not yet reached the age of sixty, he reminded himself over and over again of his father’s lonely old age, and he knew he had no desire to follow in his footsteps. He needed only to look into the bathroom mirror in the morning when he was shaving to see that he was growing more and more like his father. When he was young, his face had resembled his mother’s. But now it seemed as if his father was taking him over — like a runner who has been lagging a long way behind but is slowly catching up the closer he gets to the invisible finish line.

Wallander’s worldview was fairly simple. He did not want to become a bitter hermit growing old in isolation, being visited only by his daughter and perhaps now and then by a former colleague who had suddenly remembered that Wallander was still alive. He had no religious hopes of there being something in store for him on the other side of the black River Styx. There would be nothing but the same darkness that he had once emerged from. Until his fiftieth birthday, he had harbored a vague fear of death, something that had become his own personal mantra — that he would be dead for such a long time. He had seen far too many dead bodies in his life. There was nothing in their expressionless faces to suggest that their souls had been absorbed into some kind of heaven. Like so many other police officers, he had experienced every possible variation of death. Just after his fiftieth birthday had been celebrated with a party and cake at the police station, marked by a speech full of empty phrases by the former chief of police, Liza Holgersson, he had bought a new notebook and tried to record his memories of all the dead people he had come across. It had been a macabre exercise and he had no idea why he had been tempted to pursue it. When he got as far as the tenth suicide, a man in his forties, a drug addict with more or less every problem it was possible to imagine, he gave up. The man had hanged himself in the attic of the condemned apartment building where he lived, hanging in such a way that he was guaranteed to break his neck and hence avoid being slowly choked to death. His name was Welin. The pathologist had told Wallander that the man had been successful — he had proved to be a skillful executioner. At that point Wallander had abandoned his suicide cases and instead stupidly devoted several hours in an attempt to recall the young people or children he had found dead. But he soon gave that up as well. It was too repugnant. Then he felt ashamed of what he had been trying to do and burned the notebook, as if his efforts were both perverted and illegal. In fact, he was basically a cheerful person — it was just that he had allowed another side of his personality to take over.

Death had been his constant companion. He had killed people in the line of duty — but after the obligatory investigation he had never been accused of unnecessary violence.

Having killed two people was the cross he had to bear. If he rarely laughed, it was because of what he had been forced to endure.

But one day he made a critical decision. He had been out near Löderup, not far from the house where his father used to live, to talk to a farmer who had been the target of a very nasty robbery. On the way back to Ystad he noticed a real estate agent’s sign picturing a little dirt road where there was a house for sale. He reacted automatically, stopped the car, turned around, and found his way to the address. Even before he got out of the car it was obvious to him that the property was in need of repair. It had originally been a U-shaped building, the bottom half clad in wood. But now one of the wings was missing — perhaps it had burned down. He walked around the house. It was a day in early fall. He could still remember seeing a skein of geese migrating south, flying directly above his head. He peered in through the windows and soon established that only the roof badly needed to be fixed. The view was enchanting; he could just make out the sea in the far distance, and possibly even one of the ferries on the way to Ystad from Poland. That afternoon in September 2003 marked the beginning of a love story with this remote house.

He drove straight to the real estate agent’s office in the center of Ystad. The asking price was low enough that he would be able to manage the mortgage payments. The very next day he returned to negotiate with the agent, a young man who spoke at breakneck speed and gave the impression of living in a parallel universe. The previous owners were a young couple who had moved to Skåne from Stockholm but almost immediately, before they even had time to buy furniture, decided to split up. Yet there was nothing hidden in the walls of the empty house that scared him. And the most important thing was crystal clear: he would be able to move in without delay. The roof would last for another year or two; all he needed to do was to redecorate some of the rooms, perhaps install a new bath and maybe acquire a new stove. But the boiler was less than fifteen years old, and all the plumbing and electrical fittings no older.

Before leaving, Wallander asked if there were any other potential buyers. There was one, said the agent, looking distinctly worried, as if he really wanted Wallander to get the house but at the same time implying that he had better make his mind up fast. But Wallander had no intention of rushing in blindly. He spoke to one of his colleagues whose brother was a home inspector and managed to arrange for the expert to inspect the house the very next day. He found nothing wrong apart from what Wallander had already noticed. That same day Wallander spoke to his bank manager and was informed that he could rely on a mortgage big enough to buy the house. During all his years in Ystad, Wallander had saved up a lot of money without ever thinking much about it. Enough for the down payment.

That evening he sat at his kitchen table and made detailed financial calculations. He found the occasion solemn and significant. By midnight he had made up his mind: he would buy the house, which had the dramatic-sounding name of Black Heights. Despite the late hour, he called his daughter, Linda, who lived in a new development just off the main road to Malmö. She was still awake.

“You must come over,” said Wallander excitedly. “I’ve got news for you.”

“What? In the middle of the night?”

“I know it’s your day off tomorrow.”

It had been a complete surprise to him a few years earlier when, during a walk along the beach at Mossby Strand, Linda told him she had decided to follow in his footsteps and join the police force. It cheered him up instantly. In a way it was as if she was giving new meaning to all the years he had been a police officer. When she finished her training, she was assigned to the Ystad force. The first few months, she lived with him in the apartment in Mariagatan. It was not an ideal arrangement; he was set in his ways, and he also found it hard to accept that she was grown up now. But their relationship was saved when she managed to find an apartment of her own.

When she arrived in the early hours, he told her what he was planning to do. The next day she accompanied him to the house and said immediately that it was perfect. No other house would do, only this one at the end of a dirt road at the top of a gentle slope down to the sea.

“Granddad will haunt you,” she said. “But you don’t need to be afraid. He’ll be a sort of guardian angel.”

It was a significant and happy moment in Wallander’s life when he signed the contract of sale and suddenly found himself standing there with a bunch of keys in his hand. He moved in on November first, having redecorated two rooms but having refrained from buying a new stove. He left Mariagatan without the slightest doubt that he was doing the right thing. A southeasterly gale was blowing the day he moved in.

That first evening, with the storm raging, he lost electricity. Wallander sat in his new home in pitch darkness. There was groaning and creaking coming from the rafters, and he discovered a leak in the ceiling. But he had no regrets. This was where he was going to live.

There was a dog kennel outside the house. Ever since he was a little boy Wallander had dreamed of having a dog. By the time he was thirteen he had given up hope, but out of the blue he got one as a present from his parents. He loved that dog more than anything else in the world. Looking back, it felt like the dog, Saga, had taught him what love could be. When she was three years old, she was run over by a truck. The shock and sorrow were worse than anything he had experienced in his young life. More than forty years later, Wallander had no difficulty recalling all those chaotic emotions. Death strikes, he sometimes thought. It has a powerful and unforgiving fist.

Two weeks later he acquired a dog, a black Labrador puppy. He wasn’t quite a purebred, but he was nevertheless described by the owner as top class. Wallander had decided in advance that the dog would be called Jussi, after the world-famous Swedish tenor who was one of Wallander’s greatest heroes.

Nearly four years after he bought the house, on January 12, 2007, Wallander’s whole life changed in an instant.

As he stepped out into the hall a few paces behind Kristina Magnusson, whom he liked viewing from behind when nobody was looking, the phone rang in his office. He considered ignoring it, but instead he turned and went back in. It was Linda. She had a few days off, having worked on New Year’s Eve, during which Ystad had been unusually lively, with lots of cases of domestic violence and assaults.

“Do you have a minute?”

“Not really. We’re on the verge of identifying some crooks in a big case.”

“I need to see you.”

Wallander thought she sounded tense. He started to worry, as he always did, that something might have happened to her.

“Is it anything serious?”

“Not at all.”

“I can meet you at one o’clock.”

“Mossby Strand beach?”

Wallander thought she was joking.

“Should I bring my bathing suit?”

“I’m serious. Mossby Strand. But no bathing suit.”

“Why do we have to go out there in the cold with this icy wind blowing?”

“I’ll be there at one o’clock. So will you.”

She hung up before he could ask anything else. What did she want? He stood there, trying in vain to think of an answer. Then he went to the conference room with the best television set and sat for two hours going through CCTV camera footage for the case he was working on, the brutal attack and robbery of an elderly arms dealer and his wife. As twelve-thirty approached, they were still only halfway through. Wallander stood up and announced that they could review the rest of the tapes after two o’clock. Martinsson, one of the officers Wallander had worked with longest in Ystad, looked at him in surprise.

“You mean we should stop now? With so much still to do? You don’t usually break for lunch.”

“I’m not going to eat. I have an appointment.”

He left the room, thinking that his tone of voice had been unnecessarily sharp. He and Martinsson were not only colleagues, they were also friends. When Wallander threw his housewarming party out at Löderup it was of course Martinsson who gave a speech in praise of him, the dog, and the house. We are like an old hardworking couple, he thought as he left the police station. An old couple who are always bickering, mainly to keep each other on our toes.

He went to his car, a Peugeot he’d had for the last four years, and drove off. How many times have I driven along this road? How many more times will I drive along it? As he waited for a red light to change, he remembered something his father had told him about a cousin Wallander had never met. His cousin used to be captain of a ferry plying between several islands in the Stockholm archipelago — short trips, no more than five minutes at a time, but year in, year out, the same crossings. One afternoon in October something snapped inside him. The ferry had a full load, but he suddenly changed course and headed straight out to sea. He said later that he knew there was enough diesel in the tank to take him as far as one of the Baltic states. But that was all he said, after he was overpowered by angry passengers and the coast guard raced out to put the ferry back on course. He never explained why he did what he did.

But in a vague sort of way, Wallander thought he understood him.

As he drove west along the coast road he could see dark thunderclouds building up on the horizon. The radio had warned that there was a risk of more snow in the evening. Shortly before he passed the side road to Marsvinsholm he was overtaken by a motorcycle. The rider waved at him and made Wallander think of something that frightened him more than anything else: that one of these days Linda would have a motorcycle accident. He had been totally unprepared when, several years earlier, she turned up outside his apartment on her newly bought bike, a Harley-Davidson covered in glittering chrome. His first question when she took off her crash helmet was whether she had lost her mind.

“You don’t know about all my dreams,” she had said with a broad, happy grin. “Just as I’m sure I don’t know all yours.”

“I don’t dream about a motorbike, that’s for sure.”

“Too bad. We could have gone for rides together.”

He had gone so far as to promise to buy her a car and pay for all her gas if she got rid of the motorcycle. But she refused, and he knew that the battle was lost. She had inherited his stubbornness, and he would never be able to take the motorcycle away from her, no matter what temptations he could offer.

When he turned into the parking lot at Mossby Strand, which was deserted and windswept, she had taken off her helmet and was standing on top of a sand dune, her hair fluttering in the wind. Wallander switched off the engine and sat looking at her, his daughter in the dark leather outfit and the expensive boots from a factory in California that she had paid nearly a month’s wages for. Once upon a time she was a little girl sitting on my knee, Wallander thought, and I was the biggest hero in her life. Now she is thirty-six, a police officer just like me, with a brain of her own and a big smile. What more could I ask for?

He stepped out into the wind and plowed his way through the soft sand until he was standing by her side. She smiled at him.

“Something happened here,” she said. “Do you remember what?”

“You told me that you were going to become a police officer. On this very spot.”

“I’m thinking of something else.”

Wallander realized what she was getting at.

“A rubber dinghy drifted ashore here, with two dead men inside it,” he said. “So many years ago that I can’t remember exactly when. An incident from a different world, you might say.”

“Tell me about that world.”

“That couldn’t possibly be why you made me come here.”

“Tell me anyway!”

Wallander stretched out his hand toward the water.

“We didn’t know much about the countries on the other side of the sea. We sometimes pretended the Baltic states didn’t exist. We were cut off from our nearest neighbors. And they were cut off from us. But then that rubber dinghy came ashore, and the investigation took me to Latvia, to Riga. I went behind the iron curtain that no longer exists. The world was different then. Not worse, not better, just different.”

“I’m going to have a baby,” said Linda. “I’m pregnant.”

Wallander held his breath, as if he didn’t understand what she’d said. Then he stared at her stomach, hidden behind her leather suit. She burst out laughing.

“There’s nothing to see. I’m only in the second month.”

Looking back, Wallander remembered every detail of that meeting with Linda, when she told him her staggering news. They walked down to the beach, leaning into the howling wind. She answered his questions. When he arrived back at the police station an hour late, he had almost forgotten all about the investigation he was in charge of.

Shortly before the end of that day, just as it was beginning to snow again, they finally found pictures of the two men who had probably been involved in the arms theft and brutal murder. Wallander summed up what they all knew: that they had taken a big step toward solving this case.

When the meeting ended and everybody was gathering together their papers, Wallander felt an almost irresistible urge to tell them about the great joy he had just been gifted with.

But he said nothing, of course.

He wouldn’t allow his colleagues to come that close to his private life, not ever.

2

On August 30, 2007, shortly after two in the afternoon, Linda gave birth to a daughter, Kurt Wallander’s first grandchild, at Ystad Hospital. The delivery was normal, and also punctual — on the exact day predicted by her midwife. Wallander had taken the precaution of being on vacation at the time, and he spent the day trying to mix a bucket of cement in order to repair cracks under the porch roof next to the front door. It wasn’t all that successful, but at least it kept him occupied. When the phone rang and he was informed that from now on he was entitled to call himself Granddad, he started crying. The feeling took him by surprise, and for a while he was utterly defenseless.

It wasn’t Linda who called, but the baby’s father, financier Hans von Enke. Wallander didn’t want to reveal how emotional he was, so he merely thanked von Enke for the news, sent his greetings to Linda, and hung up.

Then he went for a long walk with Jussi. Skåne was still luxuriating in the heat of late summer. There had been thunderstorms during the night, and now, after the rain, the air was fresh and easy to breathe. At last Wallander was able to admit to himself that he had often wondered why Linda had never before expressed a desire to have children. Now she was thirty-seven years old, in Wallander’s opinion far too late in life for a woman to be a mother. Mona had been much younger when Linda was born. He had kept an eye on Linda’s relationships from a discreet distance; he had preferred some boyfriends to others. Occasionally he had been convinced that she had finally found the right man — but then it was suddenly all over, and she never told him why. Even though Wallander and Linda were very close, there were certain things they never discussed. One of the taboo subjects was having children.

That day on the windswept beach at Mossby Strand was the first he had heard about the man she was going to have a child with. It was a complete surprise to Wallander, who had thought his daughter wasn’t even in a steady relationship at the time.

Linda had met Hans von Enke through mutual friends in Copenhagen, at a dinner to celebrate an engagement. Hans was from Stockholm, but had been living in Copenhagen for the last couple of years, working for a finance company that specialized in setting up hedge funds. Linda had found him somewhat self-important, and had been annoyed by him. She informed him, rather fiercely, that she was a simple police officer, badly paid, and had no idea what a hedge fund was. It ended up with them going for a long evening stroll through the streets of Copenhagen, and deciding to meet again. Hans von Enke was two years younger than Linda, and didn’t have any children either. Both of them had decided from the very start, without saying as much but nevertheless being quite clear about it, that they were going to try and have children together.

Two days after the revelation, Linda came in the evening to Wallander’s house with the man she had decided to live with. Hans von Enke was tall and thin, balding, with piercing bright blue eyes. Wallander immediately felt uncomfortable in his presence, found his way of expressing himself off-putting, and wondered what on earth had inspired Linda to take a shine to him. When she had told him that Hans’s salary was three times as big as her father’s, and that in addition he received a bonus every year that could be as much as a million kronor, Wallander had concluded depressingly that it must be the money that attracted her. That thought annoyed him so much that the next time he saw Linda he asked her outright. They were sitting in a café in the middle of Ystad. Linda had been so angry that she had thrown a roll at him and stormed out. He had hurried after her and apologized. No, it had nothing to do with the money, she explained. It was genuine and all-consuming love, something she had never experienced before.

Wallander made up his mind to try hard to view his future son-in-law more sympathetically. Via the Internet and with the aid of the bank manager who handled his modest affairs in Ystad, Wallander found out as much as he could about the finance company Hans worked for. He discovered what hedge funds were, and many more details alleged to be the basis of a modern finance company’s activities. Hans von Enke invited him to Copenhagen and took him on a tour of his opulent offices at Rundetårn. Afterward, Hans invited him to lunch, and when Wallander returned to Ystad he no longer had the feeling of inferiority that had affected him at their first meeting. He called Linda from the car and told her that he had begun to appreciate the man she had chosen.

“He has one fault,” said Linda. “He doesn’t have enough hair. Otherwise he’s okay.”

“I’m looking forward to the day when I can show him my office.”

“I’ve already shown him. Last week when he was here visiting. Didn’t anybody tell you?”

Needless to say, nobody had said a word about it to Wallander. That evening he sat at his kitchen table, pencil in hand, and worked out Hans von Enke’s annual salary. He was astonished when he saw the final figure. Once again he had a vague feeling of unease. After all his years in the police force, his own salary was barely 40,000 kronor per month. He regarded that as a high wage. But he wasn’t the one getting married. The money might or might not be what would make Linda happy. It was none of his business.

In March Linda and Hans moved in together in a big house outside Rydsgård that the young financier had bought. He started commuting to Copenhagen, and Linda carried on working in Ystad. Once they had settled in, Linda invited Kurt to dinner at their place the following Saturday. Hans’s parents would be there, and obviously they would like to meet Linda’s father.

“I’ve spoken to Mom,” she said.

“Is she coming too?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Linda shrugged.

“I think she’s unwell.”

“What’s the matter with her?”

Linda looked long and hard at him before answering.

“Too much booze. I think she’s drinking more than ever now.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know.”

Wallander accepted the invitation to dinner to meet Hans von Enke’s parents. The father, Håkan von Enke, was a former commander in the Swedish navy and had been in command of both submarines and surface vessels that specialized in hunting down submarines. Linda wasn’t sure, but she thought that at one time he had been a member of a team that decided when military units were allowed to open fire on an enemy. Hans von Enke’s mother was named Louise and had been a language teacher. Hans was an only child.

“I’m not used to mixing with the nobility,” Wallander said somberly when Linda finished speaking.

“They’re just like everybody else. I think you’ll find you have a lot to talk about.”

“Such as?”

“You’ll find out. Don’t be so negative.”

“I’m not being negative! I just wonder...”

“We’ll be eating at six o’clock. Don’t be late. And don’t bring Jussi. He’ll just make a nuisance of himself.”

“Jussi’s a very obedient dog. How old are they, Hans’s parents?”

“Håkan will be seventy-five shortly; Louise is a year or two younger. And Jussi never takes any notice of what you tell him to do — you should know that, since you’ve failed to train him properly. Thank God you did better with me.”

She left the room before Wallander had time to reply. For a moment or two he tried to get annoyed by the fact that she always had to have the last word, but he couldn’t manage it and returned to his papers.

It was drizzling unseasonably over Skåne on Saturday when he set off from Ystad to meet Hans von Enke’s parents. He had been sitting in his office since early morning, yet again, for who knows how many times, going through the most important parts of the investigation material concerning the death of the arms dealer and the stolen revolvers. They thought they had identified the thieves, but they still had no proof. I’m not looking for a key, he thought. I’m hunting for the slightest sound of a distant tinkling from a bunch of keys. He had worked his way through about half of the voluminous documentation by three o’clock. He decided to go home, sleep for an hour or two, then get dressed for dinner. Linda had said Hans’s parents were sometimes a bit formal for her taste, but given that, she suggested her father wear his best suit.

“I only have the one I wear at funerals,” said Wallander. “But perhaps I shouldn’t put on a white tie?”

“You don’t need to come at all if you think it’s going to be so awful.”

“I was only trying to make a joke.”

“You failed. You have at least three blue ties. Pick one of those.”

As Wallander sat in a taxi on the way back to Löderup at about midnight, he decided that the evening had turned out to be much more pleasant than he had expected. He had found it easy to talk to both the retired commander and his wife. He was always on his guard when he met people he didn’t know, thinking they would regard the fact that he was a police officer with barely concealed contempt. But he hadn’t detected any such tendency in either of them. On the contrary, they had displayed what he considered to be genuine interest in his work. Moreover, Håkan von Enke had views about how the Swedish police were organized and about various shortcomings in several well-known criminal investigations that Wallander tended to agree with. And he in turn had an opportunity to ask questions about submarines, the Swedish navy, and the current downsizing of the Swedish defense facilities, to which he received knowledgeable and entertaining answers. Louise von Enke hardly spoke but sat there for most of the time with a friendly smile on her face, listening to the others talking.

After he had called a cab, Linda accompanied him as far as the gate. She held on to his arm and leaned her head on his shoulder. She did that only when she was pleased with him.

“So I did okay?” asked Wallander.

“You were better than ever. You can if you make an effort.”

“I can what?”

“Behave yourself. You can even ask intelligent questions about things that have nothing to do with police work.”

“I liked them. But I didn’t get to know her very well.”

“Louise? That’s the way she is. She doesn’t say much. But she listens better than all the rest of us put together.”

“She seemed a bit mysterious.”

They had come out onto the road and stood under a tree to avoid the drizzle, which had continued to fall all evening.

“I don’t know anyone as secretive as you,” said Linda. “For years I thought you had something to hide. But I’ve learned that only a few mysterious people are in fact hiding something.”

“And I’m not one of them?”

“I don’t think so. Am I right?”

“I suppose. But maybe people sometimes hide secrets they don’t even know they have.”

The taxi headlights cut though the darkness. It was one of those bus-like vehicles becoming more and more common with cab companies.

“I hate those buses,” said Wallander.

“Don’t start getting worked up now! I’ll bring your car tomorrow.”

“I’ll be at the police station from ten o’clock on. Go in now and find out what they thought of me. I’ll expect a report tomorrow.”

She delivered his car the following day, shortly before eleven.

“Good,” she said as she entered his office, as usual without knocking.

“What do you mean, ‘Good’?”

“They liked you. Håkan had a funny way of putting it. He said: ‘Your dad is an excellent acquisition for the family.’ ”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

She put the car keys on his desk. She was in a hurry since she and Hans had planned an outing with his parents. Wallander glanced out the window. The clouds were beginning to open up.

“Are you going to get married?” he asked before she disappeared through the door.

“They very much want us to,” she said. “I’d be grateful if you didn’t start nagging us too. We want to see if we’re compatible.”

“But you’re going to have a baby?”

“That will be fine. But being able to put up with each other for the rest of our lives is a different matter.”

She disappeared. Wallander listened to her rapid footsteps, the heels of her boots clicking against the floor. I don’t know my daughter, he thought. There was a time when I thought I did, but now I can see that she’s more and more of a stranger to me.

He stood by the window and gazed out at the old water tower, the pigeons, the trees, the blue sky emerging through the dispersing clouds. He felt deeply uneasy, an aura of desolation all around him. Or maybe it was actually inside him? As if he were turning into an hourglass with the sand silently running out. He continued watching the pigeons and the trees until the feeling drifted away. Then he went back to his desk and continued doggedly reading through the reports piled high in front of him.

Wallander spent Christmas with Linda’s family. He observed his granddaughter, who still hadn’t been given a name, with admiration and restrained joy. Linda insisted that the girl looked like him, especially her eyes, but Wallander couldn’t see any similarities, no matter how hard he tried.

“The girl should have a name,” he said as they sat drinking wine on Christmas Eve.

“All in good time,” said Linda.

“We think the name will announce itself one of these days,” said Hans.

“Why am I named Linda?” she asked out of the blue. “Where does that come from?”

“You can blame me,” said Wallander. “Mona wanted to name you something different; I can’t remember what. But as far as I was concerned, you were Linda from the very beginning. Your granddad thought you should be called Venus.”

“Venus?”

“As you know, he wasn’t always all there. Don’t you like your name?”

“I’ve got a good name,” she said. “And you don’t need to worry. If we get married, I’m not going to change my surname. I’ll never be Linda von Enke.”

“Perhaps I should become a Wallander,” said Hans. “But I don’t think my parents would like that.”

Over the next few days, Wallander spent his time organizing all the paperwork that had accumulated during the past year. It was a routine he had instigated years ago — before ringing out the old year, make room for all the junk that would build up during the one to come.

The evening the verdicts in the arms theft trial were made public, Wallander decided to stay at home and watch a movie. He had invested in a satellite dish and now had access to lots of film channels. He took his service pistol home with him, intending to clean it. He was behind in his shooting practice and knew he would need to submit to a test by the beginning of February at the latest. His desk wasn’t cleared, but he had no pressing business. I’d better make the most of the opportunity, he thought. I can watch a movie tonight; tomorrow might be too late.

But after he got home and took Jussi out for a walk, he started to feel restless. He sometimes felt abandoned in his house out in the wilds, surrounded by empty fields. Like a wrecked ship, he sometimes thought. I’ve run aground in the middle of all these brown muddy fields. This restlessness usually passed quickly, but tonight it persisted. He sat in the kitchen, spread out an old newspaper, and cleaned his gun. By the time he’d finished it was still only eight o’clock. He had no idea what inspired him, but he made up his mind, changed his clothes, and drove back into Ystad. The town was always more or less deserted, especially on weekday evenings. No more than two or three restaurants or bars would be open. Wallander parked his car and went to a restaurant in the square. It was almost empty. He sat at a corner table, then ordered an appetizer and a bottle of wine. While he was waiting for the food, he gulped down a few glasses. He told himself he was swilling the alcohol in order to put his mind at rest. By the time the food arrived, he was already drunk.

“The place is dead,” said Wallander. “Where is everybody?”

The waiter shrugged.

“Not here, that’s for sure,” he said. “Enjoy your meal.”

Wallander only picked at the food. He dug out his cell phone and scrolled through the numbers in his address book. He wanted to talk to someone. But who? He put the phone down since he didn’t want anyone to know that he was drunk. The wine bottle was empty, and he had already had more than enough. But even so, he ordered a cup of coffee and a glass of cognac when the waiter came to tell him the place was about to close. He stumbled when he got to his feet. The waiter gave him a tired look.

“Taxi,” said Wallander.

The waiter called from the telephone attached to the wall next to the bar. Wallander could feel himself swaying from side to side. The waiter replaced the receiver, and nodded.

The wind was icy cold when Wallander came out into the street. He sat in the backseat of the taxi and was almost asleep by the time it turned into his driveway. He left his clothes in a pile on the floor, and passed out the moment he lay down.

Half an hour after Wallander fell asleep, a man hurried into the police station. He was agitated, and asked to speak to the night duty officer. It happened to be Martinsson.

The man explained that he was a waiter. Then he put a plastic bag on the table in front of Martinsson. In it was a gun, similar to the one Martinsson had.

The waiter even knew the name of the customer, since Wallander was well known in town.

Martinsson filled out a criminal offense form, then sat there for a long time staring at the revolver.

How on earth could Wallander have forgotten his service weapon? And why had he taken it to the restaurant?

Martinsson checked the clock: just after midnight. He really should have called Wallander, but he didn’t.

That conversation could wait until tomorrow. He wasn’t looking forward to it.

3

When Wallander arrived at the police station the following day, there was a message waiting for him at the front desk, from Martinsson. Wallander swore under his breath. He was hungover and felt awful. If Martinsson wanted to speak to him the moment he arrived, it could mean only that something had happened that required Wallander’s immediate presence. If only it could have waited for a couple of days, he thought. Or at least a few hours. Right now all he wanted to do was to close the door to his office, unplug his phone, and try to get some sleep with his feet on his desk. He took off his jacket, emptied an open bottle of mineral water, then went to see Martinsson, who now had the office that used to be Wallander’s.

He knocked on the door and went in. The moment he saw Martinsson’s face he realized it was serious. Wallander could always read his mood, which was important since Martinsson swung constantly between energetic exhilaration and glum dejection.

Wallander sat down in the guest chair.

“What happened? You only write me notes like that if something important has come up.”

Martinsson stared at him in surprise.

“You mean you have no idea what I want to talk to you about?”

“No. Should I?”

Martinsson didn’t reply. He merely continued looking at Wallander, who began to feel even worse than he had before.

“I’m not going to sit here guessing,” he said in the end. “What is it you want?”

“You still have no idea why I want to talk to you?”

“No.”

“That makes things harder.”

Martinsson opened a drawer, took out Wallander’s service pistol, and put it on the desk in front of him.

“I take it you know what I’m talking about now?”

Wallander stared at the revolver. A shudder ran down his spine, and almost succeeded in banishing his hangover. He recalled having cleaned his gun the previous evening — but then what happened? He groped around in his memory. The gun had migrated from his kitchen table to Martinsson’s desk. But how it had gotten there, what had happened in between, he had no idea. He had no explanations, no excuses.

“You went to a restaurant last night,” said Martinsson. “Why did you take your gun with you?”

Wallander shook his head incredulously. He still couldn’t remember. Had he put it in his jacket pocket when he drove into Ystad? No matter how unlikely that seemed, apparently he must have.

“I don’t know,” Wallander admitted. “My mind’s a blank. Tell me.”

“A waiter came here around midnight,” said Martinsson. “He was agitated because he had found the gun on the bench you had been sitting on.”

Vague fragments of memory were racing around in Wallander’s mind. Maybe he had taken the gun out of his jacket when he’d used his cell phone? But how could he possibly have forgotten it?

“I have no idea what happened,” he said. “But I suppose I must have put the gun in my pocket when I went out.”

Martinsson stood up and opened the door.

“Would you like a coffee?”

Wallander shook his head. Martinsson disappeared into the hall. Wallander reached for the gun and saw that it was loaded. He broke into a sweat. The thought of shooting himself flashed through his mind. He moved the gun so that the barrel was pointing at the window. Martinsson came back.

“Can you help me?” Wallander asked.

“I’m afraid not this time. The waiter recognized you. You’ll have to go from here straight to the boss.”

“Have you already spoken to him?”

“It would have been dereliction of duty if I hadn’t.”

Wallander had nothing more to say. They sat there in silence. Wallander tried to find an escape route that he knew didn’t exist.

“What will happen now?” he asked eventually.

“I’ve been trying to read up on it in the rule book. There will be an internal investigation, of course. There’s also a risk that the waiter — Ture Saage is his name, incidentally, if you didn’t know that already — might leak information to the press. Nowadays you can earn a few kronor if you have the right kind of information to sell. Careless, drunken policemen could well sell a few extra copies.”

“I hope you told him to keep his mouth shut?”

“Of course I did! I even told him he could be arrested if he leaked any details of a police investigation. But I think he saw through me.”

“Should I talk to him?”

Martinsson leaned over his desk. Wallander could see that he was both tired and depressed. That made him feel sad.

“How many years have we been working together? Twenty? More? At first you were the one who told me what to do. You told me off, but you also gave credit when it was due. Now it’s my turn to tell you what to do. Nothing. You could only make things worse. Don’t speak to the waiter; don’t speak to anyone. Except for Lennart. And you need to see him now. He’s expecting you.”

Wallander nodded and stood up.

“We’ll try to make the best of this,” said Martinsson.

Wallander could tell from his tone of voice that he was not particularly hopeful.

Wallander reached out for his gun, but Martinsson shook his head.

“That had better stay here,” he said.

Wallander went out into the hallway. Kristina Magnusson was passing, a mug of coffee between her hands. She nodded to him. Wallander could tell that she knew. He didn’t turn around to check her out as he usually did. Instead he went into a bathroom and locked the door. The mirror over the sink was cracked. Just like me, Wallander thought. He rinsed his face, dried it, and contemplated his bloodshot eyes. The crack divided his face in two.

Wallander sat down on the toilet seat. There was another feeling nagging at him, not just the shame and the fear following what he had done. Nothing like this had ever happened before. He couldn’t recall ever having handled his service issue pistol in a way that broke the rules. Whenever he took it home he always locked it away in the cabinet where he kept a licensed shotgun that he used on the very infrequent occasions he hunted hares with his neighbors. But there was something affecting him much more deeply than having been drunk. Another sort of forgetfulness that he didn’t recognize. A darkness in which he could find no lamps to light.

When he finally stood up and went to see the chief of police, he had been sitting in the bathroom for over twenty minutes. If Martinsson called to say I was on my way, they probably think I’ve run off, he thought. But it’s not quite as bad as that.

Following two female police chiefs, Lennart Mattson had taken up his post in Ystad the previous year. He was young, barely forty, and had risen surprisingly quickly through the police bureaucracy, which is where most senior officers came from nowadays. Like most active police officers, Wallander regarded this type of recruitment as ominous for the ability of the police force to carry out its duties properly. The worst part was that Mattson came from Stockholm and complained often that he had difficulty understanding the Skåne dialect. Wallander was aware that some of his colleagues made an effort to speak as broadly as possible whenever they had to talk to Mattson, but Wallander refrained from such malevolent demonstrations. He had decided to keep to himself and not get involved in anything Mattson was doing, as long as he didn’t interfere too much in real police work. Since Mattson also seemed to respect him, Wallander had not had any problems with his new boss so far.

But he realized that things had now changed once and for all.

The door to Mattson’s office was ajar. Wallander knocked and went in when he heard Mattson’s high-pitched, almost squeaky voice.

A patterned sofa and matching armchairs had been squeezed into the office with considerable difficulty. Wallander sat down. Mattson had developed a technique of never opening a conversation if it could possibly be avoided, even if he was the one who had called the meeting. There was a rumor that a consultant from the National Police Board had sat in silence with Mattson for half an hour before standing up, leaving the room without a word having been spoken, and flying back to Stockholm.

Wallander toyed with the idea of challenging Mattson by not saying anything. But that would only have made him feel worse — he needed to clear the air as quickly as possible.

“I have no excuse for what happened,” he began. “I accept that it is indefensible, and that you have to take whatever disciplinary steps the regulations specify.”

Mattson seemed to have prepared his questions in advance, since they came out like machine-gun fire.

“Has it happened before?”

“That I’ve left my gun in a restaurant? Of course not!”

“Do you have an alcohol problem?”

The question made Wallander frown. What had given Mattson that idea?

“I’m a moderate drinker,” Wallander said. “When I was younger I suppose I drank a fair amount on the weekend. But I don’t do that anymore.”

“But nevertheless you went out boozing on a weekday evening?”

“I didn’t go out boozing. I went out for dinner.”

“A bottle of wine and a cognac with your coffee?”

“If you already know what I drank, why are you asking? But I don’t call that boozing. I don’t think any sane person in this country would call it that. Boozing is when you swill down schnapps or vodka, probably straight from the bottle, and drink in order to get drunk, not for any other reason.”

Mattson thought for a moment before his next question. Wallander was annoyed by his squeaky voice and wondered if the man sitting opposite him had the slightest idea of what police work in the field entailed, what horrific experiences it could involve.

“About twenty years ago you were apprehended by some of your colleagues for driving under the influence. They hushed it up, and nothing came of it. But you must understand that I wonder if you do in fact have an alcohol problem that you have been keeping under wraps, and which has now led to a most unfortunate consequence.”

Wallander remembered that occasion all too well. He had been in Malmö and had dinner with Mona. It was after their divorce, at a time when he still imagined he would be able to persuade her to come back to him. They had ended up arguing, and he had seen her being picked up outside the restaurant by a man he didn’t recognize. He was so jealous and upset that he took leave of his senses and drove home, instead of getting a hotel room or sleeping in the car. His colleagues brought him back to his apartment and parked his car there, and he heard nothing more about it. One of the officers who had arrested him that night was now dead; the other had retired. But evidently rumors were still buzzing around the station. That surprised him.

“I’m not denying that. But as you said yourself, it was twenty years ago. And I assure you, I don’t have an alcohol problem. If I choose to eat out one night in the middle of the week, I can’t see why that should be anybody’s business but my own.”

“I will have to take the necessary steps. Since you are due some vacation time and are not involved in a serious investigation at the moment, I suggest you take a week off. There will have to be an internal investigation, of course. That’s all I can say at the moment.”

Wallander stood up. Mattson remained seated.

“Is there anything you’d like to add?” he asked.

“No,” said Wallander. “I’ll do what you suggest. I’ll take time off and go home.”

“It would be best if you left your gun here.”

“I’m not an idiot,” said Wallander. “Irrespective of what you think.”

Wallander went back to his office and fetched his jacket. Then he left the police station via the garage and drove home. It occurred to him that he might still have alcohol in his blood after yesterday’s gallivanting, but since things couldn’t get any worse than they were, he kept on going. A strong northeasterly wind had blown up. Wallander shuddered as he walked from the car to his front door. Jussi was leaping around inside his kennel, but Wallander didn’t have the strength even to think about taking him for a walk. He undressed, lay down, and went to sleep. By the time he woke up it was twelve o’clock. He lay there motionless, his eyes open, and listened to the wind battering the house walls.

The feeling that something wasn’t as it should be had started nagging at him again. A shadow had descended over his existence. How had he not even missed the gun when he woke up? It was as if somebody else had been acting in his stead, and then had switched off his memory so that he wouldn’t know what had happened.

He got up, dressed, and tried to eat, although he still felt sick. He was very tempted to pour himself a glass of wine, but he resisted. He was doing the dishes when Linda called.

“I’m on my way,” she said. “I’m just checking that you’re at home.”

She hung up before he had chance to say a single word. She arrived twenty minutes later, carrying her sleeping baby. Linda sat down opposite her father on the brown leather sofa he had bought the year they moved to Ystad. The baby was asleep on a chair next to her. Kurt wanted to talk about her but Linda shook her head. Later, but not now; first things first.

“I heard what happened,” she said. “But even so, I feel as if I don’t know anything about it.”

“Did Martinsson call?”

“Yes, right after he spoke to you. He was very unhappy about it all.”

“Not as unhappy as I am,” said Wallander.

“Tell me what I don’t know.”

“If you’ve come here to interrogate me you might as well leave.”

“I just want to know. You’re the last person I’d ever have expected to do something like this.”

“Nobody died,” said Wallander. “Nobody even got hurt. Besides, anyone can do anything. I’ve lived long enough to know that.”

Then he told her the whole story, from the restlessness that had driven him out of the house in the first place, to not knowing why he had taken his gun with him. When he had finished she said nothing for a long time.

“I believe you,” she said eventually. “Everything you’re telling me comes down to one single fact, one single circumstance in your life. That you are far too lonely. You suddenly lose control, and there’s nobody around to calm you down, to stop you from rushing off. But there’s still something I wonder about.”

“What?”

“Have you told me everything? Or is there something you’re not saying?”

Wallander wondered for a moment if he should tell her about the strange feeling of a shadow closing in on him. But he shook his head; there was nothing more to tell her.

“What do you think’s going to happen?” she asked. “I can’t remember what the rule book says.”

“There’ll be an internal investigation. After that, I have no idea.”

“Is there a chance they’ll fire you?”

“I figure I’m too old to be fired. Besides, the offense isn’t all that serious. But they might force me into early retirement.”

“Wouldn’t that appeal to you?”

Wallander was chewing away at an apple when she asked him that question. He hurled the core at the wall with all his strength.

“You’ve just said that my problem is loneliness!” he roared. “What would it be like if I was forced to retire? I’d have nothing at all left.”

Wallander’s bellowing woke the baby up.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You’re scared,” she said. “I can understand that. I would be too. I don’t think anybody should apologize for being scared.”

Linda stayed until the evening, made him dinner, and they spoke no more about what had happened. Kurt escorted her to the car through the cold, gusting wind.

“Will you manage?” she asked.

“I’ll always get by. But thank you for asking.”

The following day Wallander had a call from Lennart Mattson, who wanted to see him without delay. When they met, he was introduced to an internal affairs officer from Malmö who had come to interrogate him.

“Whenever it suits you,” said the investigator, whose name was Holmgren and who was about the same age as Wallander.

“Now,” said Wallander. “Why put it off?”

They shut themselves away in one of the police station’s smallest conference rooms. Wallander made an effort to be precise, not to make excuses, not to trivialize what had happened. Holmgren took notes, occasionally asked Wallander to take a step backward, repeat an answer, and then continue. It seemed to Wallander that if the roles had been reversed, the interrogation would doubtless have proceeded in exactly the same way. It took slightly more than an hour. Holmgren put down his pen and looked at Wallander — not in the way one would look at a criminal who had just confessed, but as somebody who had messed things up. He seemed to be feeling sorry for the trouble Wallander found himself in.

“You didn’t fire a shot,” said Holmgren. “You forgot your gun when you drank too much at a restaurant. That’s serious — there’s no getting away from that — but you haven’t actually committed a crime. You haven’t assaulted anyone; you haven’t taken bribes; you haven’t harassed anyone.”

“So I’m not going to be fired, you don’t think?”

“Hardly. But it’s not up to me.”

“But your guess would be...?”

“I’m not going to guess. You’ll have to wait and see.”

Holmgren began collecting his papers and placing them carefully in his briefcase. He suddenly paused.

“It’s obviously an advantage if this business doesn’t get into the hands of the media,” he said. “Things always take a turn for the worse when we can’t hush up this sort of thing and keep it inside the police force.”

“I think we’ll be okay,” Wallander said. “There’s been no mention of it so far, so that’s an indication that nothing has been leaked.”

But Wallander was wrong. That same day there was a knock on his door. He had been lying down, but he got up because he thought it was one of his neighbors. When he opened the door, a photographer took a flash picture of Wallander’s face. Standing next to the cameraman was a reporter who introduced herself as Lisa Halbing, with a smile Wallander immediately classified as fake.

“Can we talk?” she asked aggressively.

“What about?” wondered Wallander, who already had a pain in his stomach.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t think anything.”

The cameraman took a whole series of pictures. Wallander’s first instinct was to punch him, but he did no such thing, of course. Instead he demanded that the cameraman promise not to take any photographs inside the house; that was his private domain. When both the cameraman and Lisa Halbing promised to respect his privacy, he let them in and invited them to sit down at his kitchen table. He served them coffee and the remains of a sponge cake he’d been presented with a few days earlier by one of his neighbors who was an avid baker.

“Which newspaper?” he asked when he had finished serving coffee. “I forgot to ask.”

“I should have said.” Lisa Halbing was heavily made up and was trying to conceal her excess weight beneath a loose-fitting tunic shirt. She was in her thirties, and looked a bit like Linda — although his daughter would never have worn so much makeup.

“I work for various papers,” Halbing said. “If I have a good story, I sell it to the one that pays best.”

“And right now you think I’m a good story, is that it?”

“On a scale of one to ten you might just about scrape into four. No more than that.”

“What would I have been if I’d shot the waiter in the restaurant?”

“Then you’d have been a perfect ten. That would obviously have been worth a front-page headline.”

“How did you find out about this?”

The cameraman was itching to pick up his camera, but he kept his promise. Lisa Halbing was still wearing her forced smile.

“You realize of course that I’m not going to answer that question.”

“I assume it was the waiter who tipped you off.”

“It wasn’t, in fact. But I’m not going to say anything more about that.”

Looking back, it was clear to Wallander that one of his colleagues must have leaked the details. It could have been anyone, even Lennart Mattson himself. Or the investigating officer from Malmö. How much would they have earned? All the years he had been a police officer, leaks had been a continuing problem, but he had never been affected himself until now. He had never contacted a journalist, nor had he ever heard the slightest suggestion that any of his close colleagues had done so either. But then, what did he know? Precisely nothing.

Later that evening he called Linda and warned her about what she could expect to read in the following day’s paper.

“Did you tell them the honest truth?”

“At least nobody can accuse me of lying.”

“Then you’ll be okay. Lies are what they’re after. They’ll make a meal of it, but I don’t think there’ll be any repercussions.”

Wallander slept badly that night. The following day he was waiting for the phone to ring, but he had only two calls. One was from Kristina Magnusson, who was angry about the way the incident had been blown out of proportion. Shortly afterward, Lennart Mattson called.

“It’s a pity you made a statement to the press,” he said disapprovingly.

Wallander was furious.

“What would you have done if you’d been confronted by a journalist and a cameraman on your front doorstep? People who knew every detail of what had happened? Would you have shut the door in their face, or lied to them?”

“I thought it was you who had contacted them,” said Mattson lamely.

“Then you are even more stupid than I thought you were.”

Wallander slammed down the phone and unplugged it. Then he called Linda on his cell phone and said she should use that number if she wanted to talk to him.

“Come with us,” she said.

“Come with you where?”

She seemed surprised.

“Didn’t I tell you? We’re off to Stockholm. It’s Håkan’s seventy-fifth birthday. Come with us!”

“No,” he said. “I’m staying here. I’m not in a party mood. I’ve had enough of that after my evening at the restaurant.”

“We’re leaving the day after tomorrow. Think about it.”

When Wallander went to bed that night he was convinced that he wasn’t going anywhere. But by the next morning he had changed his mind. The neighbors could take care of Jussi. It might be a good idea to make himself scarce for a few days.

The following day he flew to Stockholm. Linda and her family drove. He checked into a hotel across from the Central Station. When he leafed through the evening newspapers, he noted that the gun story had already been relegated to an inside page. The big news story of the day was an unusually audacious bank robbery in Gothenburg, carried out by four robbers wearing ABBA masks. Reluctantly, he sent the robbers his grateful thanks.

That night he slept unusually soundly in his hotel bed.

4

Håkan von Enke’s birthday party was held in a rented party facility in Djursholm, the upmarket suburb of Stockholm. Wallander had never been there before. Linda assured him that a business suit would be appropriate — von Enke hated dinner jackets and tails, although he was very fond of the various uniforms he had worn during his long naval career. Wallander could have worn his police uniform if he’d wanted to, but he had taken his best suit with him. Under the circumstances, it didn’t feel right for him to use his uniform.

Why on earth had he agreed to go to Stockholm? Wallander asked himself as the express train from Arlanda Airport came to a halt in the Central Station. Perhaps it would have been better to go somewhere else. He occasionally used to take short trips to Skagen in Denmark, where he liked to stroll along the beaches, visit the art gallery, and lounge around in one of the guesthouses he had been using for the past thirty years. It was to Skagen that he had retreated many years ago when he had toyed with the idea of resigning from the police force. But here he was in Stockholm to attend a birthday party.

When Wallander arrived in Djursholm, Håkan von Enke went out of his way to make him welcome. He seemed genuinely pleased to see Wallander, who was placed at the head table, between Linda and the widow of a rear admiral. The widow, whose name was Hök, was in her eighties, used a hearing aid, and eagerly refilled her wineglass at every opportunity. Even before they had finished the soup course she had started telling slightly smutty jokes. Wallander found her interesting, especially when he discovered that one of her six children was an expert in forensic medicine in Lund — Wallander had met him on several occasions and had a good impression of him. Many speeches were delivered, but they were all blessedly short. Good military discipline, Wallander thought. The toastmaster was a Commander Tobiasson, who made a series of witty remarks that Wallander found highly amusing. When the admiral’s wife fell silent for a little while due to the malfunctioning of her hearing aid, Wallander wondered what he could expect when he celebrated his own seventy-fifth birthday. Who would come to the party, assuming he had one? Linda had told him that it had been Håkan von Enke’s own idea to rent the party rooms. If Wallander understood the situation correctly, his wife, Louise, had been surprised. Usually her husband was dismissive of his birthdays, but he had suddenly changed his mind and set up this lavish spread.

Coffee was served in an adjacent room with comfortable easy chairs. When everyone had finished eating, Wallander went out into a conservatory to stretch his legs. The restaurant was surrounded by spacious grounds — the estate had previously been the home of one of Sweden’s first and richest industrialists.

He gave a start when Håkan von Enke appeared by his side out of nowhere, clutching something as un-PC as an old-fashioned pipe and a pack of tobacco. Wallander recognized the brand: Hamilton’s Blend. For a short period in his late teens he had been a pipe smoker himself, and used the same tobacco.

“Winter,” said von Enke. “And we’re in for a snowstorm, according to the forecast.”

Von Enke paused for a moment and gazed out at the dark sky.

“When you’re on board a submarine at a sufficient depth, the climate and weather conditions are totally irrelevant. Everything is calm; you’re in a sort of ocean basement. In the Baltic Sea, twenty-five meters is deep enough if there isn’t too much wind. It’s more difficult in the North Sea. I remember once leaving Scotland in stormy conditions. We were listing fifteen degrees at a depth of thirty meters. It wasn’t exactly pleasant.”

He lit his pipe and eyed Wallander keenly.

“Is that too poetic a thought for a police officer?”

“No, but a submarine is a different world as far as I’m concerned. A scary one, I should add.”

The commander sucked eagerly at his pipe.

“Let’s be honest,” he said. “This party is boring both of us stiff. Everybody knows that I arranged it. I did it because a lot of my friends wanted me to. But now we can hide ourselves away in one of the little side rooms. Sooner or later my wife will come looking for me, but we can talk in peace until then.”

“But you’re the star of this show,” said Wallander.

“It’s like in a good play,” said von Enke. “In order to increase the excitement, the main character doesn’t need to be onstage all the time. It can be advantageous if some of the most important parts of the plot take place in the wings.”

He fell silent. Too abruptly, far too abruptly, Wallander thought. Von Enke was staring at something behind Wallander’s back. Wallander turned around. He could see the garden, and beyond it one of the minor roads that eventually joined the main Djursholm — Stockholm highway. Wallander caught a glimpse of a man on the other side of the fence, standing under a lamppost. Next to him was a parked car, with the engine running. The exhaust fumes rose and slowly dispersed in the yellow light. Wallander could tell that von Enke was worried.

“Let’s get our coffee and then shut ourselves away,” he said.

Before leaving the conservatory, Wallander turned around again; the car had vanished, and so had the man by the lamppost. Perhaps it was someone von Enke had forgotten to invite to the party, Wallander thought. It couldn’t have been anyone looking for me, surely — some journalist wanting to talk to me about the gun I left in the restaurant.

After they picked up their coffee, von Enke led Wallander into a little room with brown wooden paneling and leather easy chairs. Wallander noticed that the room had no windows. Von Enke had been watching him.

“There’s a reason for this room being a sort of bunker,” he said. “In the 1930s the house was owned for a few years by a man who owned a lot of Stockholm nightclubs, most of them illegal. Every night his armed couriers would drive around and collect all the takings, which were brought back here. In those days this room contained a big safe. His accountants would sit here, adding up the cash, doing the books, and then stash the money away in the safe. When the owner was arrested for his shady dealings, the safe was cut up. The man was called Göransson, if I remember correctly. He was given a long sentence that he couldn’t handle. He hanged himself in his cell at Långholmen Prison.”

He fell silent, took a sip of coffee, and sucked at his pipe, which had gone out. And that was the moment, in that insulated little room where the only sound was a faint hum from the party guests outside, that Wallander realized Håkan von Enke was scared. He had seen this many times before in his life: a person frightened of something, real or imagined. He was certain he wasn’t mistaken.

The conversation started awkwardly, with von Enke reminiscing about the years when he was still on active duty as a naval officer.

“The fall of 1980,” he said. “That’s a long time ago now, a generation back, twenty-eight long years. What were you doing then?”

“I was working as a police officer in Ystad. Linda was very young. I’d decided to move there in order to be closer to my elderly father. I also thought it would be a better environment for Linda to grow up in. Or at least, that was one of the reasons why we left Malmö. What happened next is a different story altogether.”

Von Enke didn’t seem to be listening to what Wallander said. He continued along his own line.

“I was working at the east coast naval base that fall. Two years before I had stepped down as officer in charge of one of our best submarines, one of the Water Snake class. We submariners always called it simply the Snake. My posting at the marine base was only temporary. I wanted to go back to sea, but the powers that be wanted me to become part of the operations command of the whole Swedish naval defense forces. In September the Warsaw Pact countries were conducting an exercise along the East German coast. MILOBALT, they called it. I can still remember that. It was nothing remarkable; they generally had their fall exercises at about the same time as we had ours. But an unusually large number of vessels were involved, since they were practicing landings and submarine recovery. We had succeeded in finding out the details without too much effort. We heard from the National Defense Radio Center that there was an awful lot of radio communication traffic between Russian vessels and their home base near Leningrad, but everything seemed to be routine; we kept an eye on what they were doing and made a note of anything we thought important in our logbooks. But then came that Thursday — it was September 18, a date that will be the very last thing I forget. We had a call from the duty officer on one of the fleet’s tugs, HMS Ajax, saying that they had just discovered a foreign submarine in Swedish territorial waters. I was in one of the map rooms at the naval base, looking for a more detailed chart of the East German coast, when an agitated national serviceman burst into the room. He never managed to explain exactly what had happened, but I went back to the command center and spoke to the duty officer on the Ajax. He said he’d been scanning the sea with his telescope and suddenly noticed the submarine’s aerials some three hundred yards away. Fifteen seconds later the submarine surfaced. The officer was on the ball, and figured out that the submarine had probably been at periscope depth but had then started to dive when they saw the tug. The Ajax was just south of Huvudskär when the incident happened, and the submarine was heading southwest, which meant that she was parallel with the border of Swedish waters but definitely on the Swedish side of the line. It didn’t take long for me to find out if there were any Swedish submarines in the area: there were not. I requested radio contact with the Ajax again, and asked the duty officer if he could describe the conning tower or the periscope he had seen. From what he said I realized immediately that it was one of the submarines of the class NATO called Whiskey. And at the time they were used only by the Russians and the Poles. I’m sure you’ll understand that my heart started beating faster when I established that. But I had two other questions.”

Von Enke paused, as if he expected Wallander to ask what the two questions were. Some peals of laughter could be heard on the other side of the door, but they soon faded away.

“I suppose you wanted to know if the submarine was in Swedish territorial waters by mistake,” said Wallander. “As was claimed when that other Russian submarine ran aground off Karlskrona?”

“I had already answered that question. There is no naval vessel as meticulous with its navigation as a submarine. That goes without saying. The submarine the Ajax had come across intended to be where it was. The question was what exactly it was up to. Why was it reconnoitering and surfacing, apparently not expecting to be discovered? It could have been a sign that the crew was being careless. But of course, there was also another possibility.”

“That the submarine wanted to be discovered?”

Von Enke nodded, and made another attempt to light his reluctant pipe.

“In that case,” he said, “to encounter a tugboat would be ideal. A vessel like that probably wouldn’t even have a catapult to attack you with. Nor would the crew be trained for confrontation. Since I was in charge at the base, I contacted the supreme commander, and he agreed with me that we should immediately send in a helicopter equipped for tracking down submarines. It made sonar contact with a moving object we decided was a submarine. For the first time in my life I gave an order to open fire in circumstances other than training exercises. The helicopter fired a depth charge to warn the submarine. Then it vanished, and we lost contact.”

“How could it simply disappear?”

“Submarines have many ways of making themselves invisible. They can descend into deep troughs, hugging the cliff walls, and thus confuse anybody trying to trace them with echo sounders. We sent out several helicopters, but we never found any further trace of it.”

“But couldn’t it have been damaged?”

“That’s not the way it goes. According to international law, the first depth charge must be a warning. It’s only later that you can force a submarine up to the surface for identification.”

“What happened next?”

“Nothing, really. There was an inquiry, and they decided that I’d done the right thing. Maybe this was the overture for what was to follow a couple of years later, when Swedish territorial waters were crawling with foreign submarines, mainly in the Stockholm archipelago. I suppose the most important result was that we had confirmation of the fact that Russian interest in our navigational channels was as great as ever. This happened at a time when nobody thought the Berlin Wall would fall or the Soviet Union collapse. It’s easy to forget that. The Cold War wasn’t over. After that incident, the Swedish navy was granted a big increase in funding. But that was all.”

Von Enke drained the rest of his coffee. Wallander was about to stand up when his host started speaking again.

“I’m not done yet. Two years later, off we went again. By then I’d been promoted to the very top of the Swedish naval defense staff. Our HQ was in Berga, and there was a combat command on duty around the clock. On October 1 we had an alarm call that we could never have imagined, even in our wildest dreams. There were indications that a submarine, or even several, were in the Hårsfjärden channel, very close to our base on Muskö. So it was no longer just a case of trespassing in Swedish territorial waters; there were foreign submarines in a restricted area. No doubt you remember all the fuss?”

“The newspapers were full of it, and television reporters were clambering around on slippery rocks.”

“I don’t know what you could compare it to. Perhaps a foreign helicopter landing in a courtyard at the heart of the royal palace. That’s what it felt like, having submarines close to our top secret military installations.”

“That was when I’d just received confirmation that I could start working in Ystad.”

Suddenly the door opened. Von Enke gave a start. Wallander noted that his right hand was on its way to the breast pocket of his jacket. Then he let it fall back onto his knee again. The door had been opened by a semi-inebriated woman who was looking for a bathroom. She withdrew, and they were alone again.

“It was in October,” von Enke resumed once the door had closed. “It sometimes felt as if the whole Swedish coast was under siege by unidentified foreign submarines. I was glad I wasn’t the one responsible for talking to all the journalists who had gathered out at Berga. We had to convert a few barrack rooms into press rooms. I was extremely busy all the time, trying to find one of those submarines. We’d lose all our credibility if we couldn’t manage to force a single one to the surface. And then, at last, came the evening when we had trapped a submarine in the Hårsfjärden channel. There was no doubt about it; the command team was convinced this was it. I was the one responsible for giving the order to open fire. During those hectic hours I spoke several times to the supreme commander and the new minister of defense. His name was Andersson, if you recall — a man from Borlänge.”

“I have a vague memory of him being called ‘Red Börje.’ ”

“That’s right. But he wasn’t up to the job. He no doubt thought the submarines were pure hell. He went back home to Dalarna and we got Anders Thunborg as minister of defense. One of Palme’s blue-eyed boys. A lot of my colleagues didn’t trust him, but the contact I had with him was good. He didn’t interfere; he asked questions. If he got an answer, he was satisfied. But once when he called me I had the distinct impression that Palme was in the room with him, standing by his side. I don’t know if that was true. But the feeling was very strong.”

“Anyway, what happened?”

Von Enke’s face twitched, as if he was annoyed by Wallander interrupting him. But when he continued there was no sign of that.

“We had cornered the submarine in such a way that it couldn’t move without our permission. I spoke to the supreme commander and told him that we were about to fire depth charges and force the sub up to the surface. We needed another hour to prepare for the operation, and then we would be able to reveal to the world the identity of this submarine that had invaded Swedish territorial waters. Half an hour passed. The hands on the wall clock seemed to be moving unbearably slowly. The whole time, I was in touch with the helicopters and the surface vessels surrounding the submarine. Forty-five minutes passed. And then it happened.”

Von Enke broke off abruptly, then stood up and left the room. Wallander wondered if he had been taken ill. But after a few moments the commander returned, carrying two glasses of cognac.

“It’s a chilly winter evening,” he said. “We need something to warm us up. Nobody seems to have missed us, so we can carry on chatting in this bunker.”

Wallander waited for the rest of the story. Even if it wasn’t perhaps totally engrossing, listening to old stories about submarines, he preferred von Enke’s company to having to talk to people he didn’t know.

“That’s when it happened,” repeated von Enke. “Four minutes before the attack was due to take place, the phone rang — the direct line to Defense Command Sweden. As far as I know it was one of the few lines guaranteed to be safe from bugging, and it was also fitted with an automatic scrambler. I was given an order that I would never have expected in a thousand years. Can you guess what it was?”

Wallander shook his head, and wrapped his hand around his glass to warm up the brandy.

“We were ordered to abort the depth charge attack. Naturally, I was dumbstruck and demanded an explanation. But I didn’t receive one — not then, at least. Just the specific order that on no account should any depth charges be fired. Obviously, I had no choice but to obey. There were only two minutes left when the helicopters were informed of the decision. None of us at Berga could understand what was going on. It was exactly ten minutes before we received our next order. If possible, it was even more incomprehensible. Our superiors seemed to have taken leave of their senses. We were ordered to back off.”

Wallander was becoming more interested.

“So you were told to let the submarine get away?”

“Nobody actually said that, of course. Not in so many words, at least. We were ordered to concentrate our attention on a different part of the Hårsfjärden channel, at its very edge, south of the Danzig straits. A helicopter had made contact with another submarine. Why was that one more important than the one we had encircled and were just about to force up to the surface? My colleagues and I were at a loss. I asked to speak to the supreme commander in person, but he was busy and couldn’t be interrupted. Which was very odd, because he was the one who had authorized the operation not long before. I even tried to speak to the minister of defense or his private secretary, but everyone seemed to have vanished, unplugged their phones, or been instructed to say nothing. The supreme commander and the minister of defense instructed to say nothing? By whom? The government could have done it, of course, or the prime minister. I had agonizing stomach pains for several hours. I didn’t understand the orders I’d been given. Aborting the operation went against my experience and instincts. I came very close to refusing to obey. That would have been the end of my military career. But I still had a grain of common sense left. And so we moved all our helicopters and two surface vessels to the Danzig straits. I asked for permission to keep at least one helicopter hovering over the place where we knew the submarine was hiding, but that was not granted. We should leave the area, and do so immediately. Which we did. With the expected result.”

“Which was?”

“Needless to say, we didn’t find a submarine near the Danzig straits. We continued searching for the rest of the night. I still wonder how many thousand liters of fuel the helicopters used up.”

“What happened to the submarine you had encircled?”

“It disappeared. Without a trace.”

Wallander thought over what he had heard. Once, in the far distant past, he had completed his national military service with a tank regiment in Skövde. He had unpleasant memories of that period of his life. On being called up he had tried to join the navy, but he had been sent to Västergötland. He had never had any trouble accepting discipline, but he did find it difficult to understand a lot of the orders they were given. It often seemed that chaos ruled, despite the fact that they were supposed to imagine themselves in a potentially lethal confrontation with an enemy.

Von Enke emptied his cognac glass.

“I started asking questions about what had happened. I shouldn’t have. I soon noticed that it was not a particularly popular thing to do. Even some of my colleagues whom I had regarded as my best friends objected to my curiosity. But all I wanted to know was why these counter-orders had been issued. I’m convinced that we were closer than we’d ever been before, or have been since, to finally making a submarine surface and identify itself. Two minutes away, no more than that. At first I wasn’t the only one to be upset about the situation. Another commander, Arosenius, and an analyst from Defense Command Sweden were part of the top-level team that day. But after a few weeks they both started keeping me at arm’s length. They didn’t want to be associated with the way I was stirring things up and asking questions. And eventually I gave up as well.”

Von Enke put his glass down on the table and leaned forward toward Wallander.

“But I haven’t forgotten it, of course. I still keep trying to understand what happened — not just on that day when we allowed a submarine to give us the slip. I keep rehashing everything that happened during those years. And I think that now, at long last, I’m beginning to get some idea of what was really going on.”

“You mean, why you weren’t allowed to force that submarine to surface?”

He nodded slowly, lit his pipe again, but said nothing. Wallander wondered if the story he had heard was destined to remain unfinished.

“I’m curious, of course. What was the explanation?”

Von Enke made a dismissive gesture.

“It’s too early for me to say anything about it. I still haven’t come to the end of the road. So right now I have nothing more to say. Perhaps we’d better go and join the other guests.”

They stood up and left the room. Wallander went back to the conservatory, and bumped into the woman who had disturbed them. Only now did he reflect on the way von Enke had moved his right hand when she had burst into the room — at first very decisively, but then slowing down and eventually dropping it back onto his knee.

Even if it seemed almost inconceivable, Wallander could think of only one explanation. Von Enke was carrying a gun. Was that really possible? he thought as he stared out through the window at the deserted garden. A retired naval commander carrying a gun at his seventy-fifth birthday party?

Wallander simply couldn’t believe it. He dismissed the thought. He must have been imagining things. One bewildering experience must have led to another. First the idea that von Enke was scared, and then that he was carrying a gun. Wallander wondered if his intuition was fading, just as he was beginning to grow more forgetful.

Linda came into the conservatory.

“I thought you must have left.”

“Not yet. But soon.”

“I’m sure both Håkan and Louise are glad you came.”

“He’s been telling me about the submarines.”

Linda raised an eyebrow.

“Really? That surprises me.”

“Why?”

“I’ve tried to get him to tell me about that lots of times. But he always refuses, says he doesn’t want to. He seems to get annoyed.”

Hans shouted for her, and Linda left. Wallander thought about what she had said. Why had Håkan von Enke chosen to tell him his story?

Later, when Wallander had returned to Skåne and thought about the evening, there was another thing that intrigued him. Obviously there was a lot in what von Enke had said that was unclear, vague, difficult for Wallander to understand. But with regard to the way in which it had been served up, as Wallander put it, there was something he couldn’t figure out. Had von Enke planned to tell him all that during the short time he knew that the father of his son’s girlfriend was going to attend the party? Or had it happened at much shorter notice, sparked by the man under the lamppost on the other side of the fence? And who was that man?

5

Three months later — on April 11, to be more precise — something happened that forced Wallander to think back yet again to that evening in January.

It happened without warning and was totally unexpected by everyone involved. Håkan von Enke disappeared without a trace from his home in the Östermalm district of Stockholm. Every morning, von Enke went for a long walk, regardless of the weather. On that particular day, it was drizzling all over Stockholm. He got up early, as usual, and shortly after six was enjoying his breakfast. At seven o’clock he knocked on the bedroom door in order to wake up his wife, and announced that he was going out for his usual walk. It generally lasted about two hours, except when it was very cold; then he would shorten it to one hour, since he used to be a heavy smoker, and his lungs had never recovered. He always took the same route. From his home in Grevgatan he would walk to Valhallavägen and from there turn off into the Lill-Jansskogen woods, following an intricate sequence of paths that eventually took him back to Valhallavägen, then southward along Sturegatan before turning left into Karlavägen and back home again. He would walk fast, using various walking sticks he had inherited from his father, and was always sweaty by the time he arrived back home and tumbled into a hot bath.

This particular morning had been like all the others, apart from one thing: Håkan von Enke never came home. Louise was very familiar with his route — she used to accompany him sometimes, but she stopped when she could no longer keep up with his pace. When he didn’t turn up, she started to worry. He was in good shape, no doubt about that; but nevertheless he was an old man and something might have happened to him. A heart attack, or a burst blood vessel perhaps? She went out to look for him, having first established that he hadn’t taken his cell phone, in spite of their agreement that he always would. It was lying on his desk. She came back at one o’clock, having retraced his footsteps. The whole time, she was half expecting to find him lying dead by the side of the road. But there was no sign of him. He had vanished. She called two, maybe three friends he might conceivably have visited, but nobody had seen him. Now she was sure that something had happened. It was about two when she called Hans at his office in Copenhagen. Although she was very worried and wanted to report Håkan’s absence to the police, Hans tried to calm her down. Louise reluctantly agreed to wait a few more hours.

But Hans called Linda immediately, and from her Wallander heard what had happened. He was trying to teach Jussi to sit still while he cleaned his paws — he had been taught what to do by a dog trainer he knew in Sturup. He was just about to give up on the grounds that Jussi had no ability whatsoever to learn new habits when the phone rang. Linda told him about Louise’s worries and asked for his advice.

“You’re a police officer yourself,” Wallander said. “You know the routine. Wait and see. Most of them come back.”

“But this is the first time he’s deviated from his routine in many years. I understand why Louise is worried. She’s not the hysterical type.”

“Wait until tonight,” said Wallander. “He’ll come back; you’ll see.”

Wallander was convinced that Håkan von Enke would turn up and that there would be a perfectly logical explanation for his absence. He was more curious than worried, and wondered what the explanation would be. But von Enke never did return, not that evening or the next one. Late in the evening of April 11 Louise reported her husband missing. She was then driven around the narrow labyrinthine roads in the Lill-Jansskogen woods in a police car, but they failed to find him. The following day her son traveled up from Copenhagen. It was then that Wallander began to realize something serious must have happened.

At that point he had still not returned to work. The internal investigation had dragged on and on. And to make matters worse, in the beginning of February he had fallen badly on the icy road outside his house and broken his left wrist. He had tripped over Jussi’s leash because the dog still hadn’t learned to stop pulling and dragging, or to walk on the correct side. His wrist was put in a cast and Wallander was given sick leave. It had been a period of short temper and frequent outbursts of anger, aimed at himself and Jussi and also at Linda. As a result, Linda had avoided seeing him any more than was necessary. She thought he had become like his father — surly, irritable, impatient. Reluctantly, he accepted that she was right. He didn’t want to turn into his father; he could cope with anything else, but not that. He didn’t want to be a bitter old man who kept repeating himself, both in his paintings and in his opinions about a world that grew increasingly incomprehensible to him. It was a time when Wallander strode around and around his house like a bear in a cage, no longer able to ignore the fact that he was now sixty years old and hence inexorably on his way into old age. He might live for another ten or twenty years, but he would never be able to experience anything but growing older and older. Youth was a distant memory, and now middle age was behind him. He was standing in the wings, waiting for his cue to go onstage to begin the third and final act, in which everything would be explained, the heroes placed in the spotlight while the villains died. He was fighting as hard as he could to avoid being forced to play the tragic role. He would prefer to leave the stage with a laugh.

What worried him most was his forgetfulness. He would write a list when he drove to Simrishamn or Ystad to do some shopping, but when he entered the shops he would realize he had forgotten it. Had he in fact ever written one? He couldn’t remember. One day, when he was more worried than usual about his memory, he made an appointment with a doctor in Malmö who advertised herself as a specialist in “the problems of old age.” The doctor, whose name was Margareta Bengtsson, received him in an old house in the center of Malmö. In Wallander’s prejudiced view she was too young to be capable of understanding the miseries of old age. He was tempted to turn around and leave, but he controlled himself, sat down in a leather armchair and began talking about his bad memory that was getting worse all the time.

“Do I have Alzheimer’s?” Wallander asked as the interview drew to a close.

Margareta Bengtsson smiled, not condescendingly but in a straightforward and friendly way.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think so. But obviously, nobody knows what’s lurking around the next corner.”

Around the next corner, Wallander thought as he walked back to his car through the bitterly cold wind. When he got there he found a parking ticket tucked under a windshield wiper. He flung it into the car without even looking to see how much he had been fined and drove home.

A car he didn’t recognize was waiting outside his front door. When Wallander got out of his own car, he saw Martinsson standing by the dog kennel, stroking Jussi through the bars.

“I was just going to leave,” said Martinsson. “I left a note on the door.”

“Have they sent you to deliver a message?”

“Not at all — I came entirely of my own accord to see how you were.”

They went into the house. Martinsson took a look at Wallander’s library, which had become extensive over the years. Then they sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. Wallander said nothing about his trip to Malmö and the appointment with the doctor. Martinsson nodded at his plastered hand.

“The cast will come off next week,” said Wallander. “What does the gossip have to say?”

“About your hand?”

“About me. The gun at the restaurant.”

“Lennart Mattson is an unusually taciturn man. I know nothing about what’s going on. But you can count on our support.”

“That’s not true. You no doubt support me. But the leak must have come from somewhere. There are a lot of people at the police station who don’t like me.”

Martinsson shrugged.

“That’s life. There’s nothing you can do about it. Who likes me?”

They talked about everything under the sun. It struck Wallander that Martinsson was now the only one left of the colleagues who were at the police station when he first moved to Ystad.

Martinsson seemed depressed as he sat there at the table. Wallander wondered if he was ill.

“No, I’m not ill,” said Martinsson. “But I’m resigned to the fact that it’s all over now. My career as a police officer, that is.”

“Did you also leave your gun in a restaurant?”

“I just can’t take it anymore.”

To Wallander’s astonishment, Martinsson started crying. He sat there like a helpless child, his hands wrapped around his coffee cup as the tears ran down his cheeks. Wallander had no idea what to do. He had occasionally noticed that Martinsson was depressed over the years, but he had never broken down like this before. He decided simply to wait it out. When the phone rang he unplugged it.

Martinsson pulled himself together and dried his face.

“What a thing to do!” he said. “I apologize.”

“Apologize for what? In my opinion anyone who can cry in front of another man displays great courage. Courage I don’t have, I’m afraid.”

Martinsson explained that he felt he had lost his way. He found himself questioning more and more the value of his work as a police officer. He wasn’t dissatisfied with the work he did, but he worried about the role of the police in the Sweden of today. The gap between what the general public expected and what the police could actually do seemed to be growing wider all the time. Now he had reached a point where every night was a virtually sleepless wait for a day he knew would bring more torture.

“I’m packing it in this summer,” he said. “There’s a firm in Malmö I’ve been in contact with. They provide security consultants for small businesses and private properties. They have a job for me. At a salary significantly higher than what I’m getting now, incidentally.”

Wallander recalled another time many years ago when Martinsson had made up his mind to resign. On that occasion Wallander had managed to persuade him to soldier on. That must have been at least fifteen years ago. He could see that this time, it was impossible to talk his colleague out of it. It wasn’t as if his own situation made his future in the police force particularly attractive.

“I think I understand what you mean,” he said. “And I think you’re doing the right thing. Change course while you’re still young enough to do it.”

“I’ll be fifty in a few years’ time,” he said. “You call that young?”

“I’m sixty,” said Wallander. “By then you’re definitely on a one-way street to old age.”

Martinsson stayed a bit longer, talking about the work he would be doing in Malmö. Wallander realized the man was trying to show him that despite everything, he still had something to look forward to, that he hadn’t lost all his enthusiasm.

Wallander walked him to his car.

“Have you heard anything from Mattson?” Martinsson asked tentatively.

“There are four possible options,” Wallander told him. “A ‘constructive reprimand,’ for instance. They can’t do that to me. That would make a laughingstock of the whole police force. A sixty-year-old officer sitting before some police commissioner like a naughty schoolboy, told to mend his ways.”

“Surely they aren’t seriously considering that? They must be out of their minds!”

“They could give me an official warning,” Wallander went on. “Or they could give me a fine. As a last resort, they could give me the boot. My guess is I’ll get a fine.”

They shook hands when they came to the car. Martinsson vanished into a cloud of snow. Wallander went back into the house, leafed through his calendar, and established that three months had now passed since that unfortunate evening when he forgot his service pistol.

He remained on sick leave even after the cast had been removed. On April 10 an orthopedic specialist at Ystad Hospital discovered that a bone in Wallander’s hand had not healed as it should have. For a brief, horrific moment Wallander thought they were going to break his wrist again, but the doctor assured him that there were other measures they could take. But it was important that Wallander not use his hand, so he couldn’t go back to work.

After leaving the hospital, Wallander stayed in town. There was a play by a modern American dramatist on at the Ystad theater, and Wallander had been given a ticket by Linda, who had a bad cold and couldn’t go herself. As a teenager she had thought briefly about becoming an actress, but that ambition passed quickly. Now she was relieved she had realized early on that she didn’t have enough talent to go on the stage.

After only ten minutes, Wallander started checking his watch. The play was boring him. Moderately talented actors were wandering around in a room and reciting their lines from various places — a stool, a table, a window seat. The play was about a family in the process of breaking up as a result of internal pressures, unresolved conflicts, lies, thwarted dreams; it completely failed to engage his interest. When the first intermission came at last, Wallander grabbed his jacket and left the theater. He had been looking forward to the production, and he felt frustrated. Was it his fault, or was the play really as boring as he found it?

He had parked his car at the train station. He crossed over the tracks and followed a well-trodden path toward the rear of the station building. He suddenly felt a blow in the small of his back and fell over. Two young men, eighteen or nineteen, were standing over him. One of them was wearing a hooded sweater, the other a leather jacket. The one with the hood was carrying a knife. A kitchen knife, Wallander noted before being punched in the face by the one in the leather jacket. His upper lip split and started bleeding. Another punch, this time on the forehead. The boy was strong and was hitting hard, as if he was in a rage. Then he started tugging at Wallander’s clothes, hissing that he wanted his wallet and cell phone. Wallander raised an arm to protect himself. The whole time, he was keeping an eye on the knife. It then dawned on him that the kids were more scared than he was, and that he didn’t need to worry about that trembling hand holding the weapon. Wallander braced himself, then aimed a kick at the kid with the knife. He missed, but grabbed ahold of his hand and gave it a violent twist. The knife flew away. At the same time, he felt a heavy blow to the back of his neck, and he fell down again. This time the blow had been so hard that he couldn’t stand up. He managed to raise himself onto his knees, and he felt the chill from the wet ground through his pant legs. He expected to be stabbed at any moment. But nothing happened. When he looked up, the kids had disappeared. He rubbed the back of his head, which felt sticky. He slowly got to his feet, realized that he was in danger of fainting, and grabbed hold of the fence surrounding the tracks. He took a few deep breaths, then made his way gingerly to the car. The back of his neck was bleeding, but he could take care of that when he got home. He didn’t seem to have any signs of a concussion.

He sat behind the wheel for a while without turning the ignition key. From one world to another, he thought. First I’m sitting in a theater but don’t feel a part of what’s happening. So I leave and then find myself in a world I often come across from the outside; but this time I am the one lying there, injured, under threat.

He thought about the knife. Once, at the very beginning of his career, as a young police officer in Malmö, he had been stabbed in Pildamm Park by a madman run amok. If the knife had entered his body only an inch to one side it would have hit his heart. In that case he would never have spent all those years in Ystad, or seen Linda grow up. His life would have come to an end before it had started in earnest.

He remembered thinking at the time: There’s a time to live, and a time to die.

It was cold in the car. He started the engine and switched on the heat. He relived the attack over and over again in his mind. He was still in shock, but he could feel the anger boiling up inside him.

He gave a start when somebody knocked on the window, afraid that the young men had come back. But the face peering in through the glass was that of a white-haired elderly lady in a beret. He opened the door a little.

“Don’t you know it’s forbidden to leave your engine running for as long as you have?” she said. “I’m out walking my dog, but I’ve been checking my watch and know how long you’ve been standing here with the engine on.”

Wallander made no reply, simply nodded and drove off. That night he lay in bed without being able to sleep. The last time he looked at the clock it was 5:00 A.M. The following day Håkan von Enke disappeared. And Wallander never reported the attack he had suffered. He told no one, not even Linda.

When von Enke failed to turn up after two days, Wallander’s future son-in-law called and asked him to go to Stockholm. Since he was still out sick, he agreed. Wallander realized that it was in fact Louise who had asked for help. He made it clear that he didn’t want to meddle in police business; his colleagues in Stockholm were dealing with the case. Police officers who interfered in other forces’ work and poked their noses where they shouldn’t were never popular.

The evening before Wallander left for Stockholm, one of those pleasant evenings in early spring when it was growing noticeably lighter, he paid a visit to Linda. As usual, Hans was not at home; he always worked late on what Wallander referred to wryly as “financial speculations.” That had led to the first and so far only argument between him and his prospective son-in-law. Hans had protested that he and his colleagues were not involved in anything as simple as that. But when Wallander asked what they did do, he had the impression that the answer referred in fact to speculations in foreign exchange and shares, derivatives and hedge funds (things that Wallander freely admitted he didn’t understand). Linda had intervened and explained that her father had no idea about mysterious and hence frightening modern financial goings-on. There had been a time when Wallander would have been upset by what she said, but now he noticed the warmth in her voice and simply flung his arms out wide as a sign that he submitted to her judgment.

But now he was sitting in the house shared by his daughter and her partner. The baby, who still hadn’t been given a name, was lying on a mat by Linda’s feet. Wallander observed her, and it occurred to him, perhaps for the first time, that his own daughter would never sit on his knee again. When one’s own child has a child, some things are gone forever.

“What do you think happened to Håkan?” Wallander asked. “What’s your view, both as a police officer and as Hans’s partner?”

Linda replied immediately — she had clearly been prepared for the question.

“I’m sure something serious has happened. I’m even afraid he might be dead. Håkan isn’t the type of person who just vanishes. He would never commit suicide without leaving a note. Mind you, he would never commit suicide, period; but that’s another matter. If he had done something wrong, he would never slink off without taking his punishment. I simply don’t believe that he disappeared of his own free will.”

“Can you explain?”

“Do I need to? Surely you understand what I mean.”

“Yes, but I want to hear it in your own words.”

Wallander noted yet again that she had prepared herself meticulously. Linda was not merely somebody talking about a relative; she was also a shrewd young police officer setting out her view of the case.

“When you talk about something not happening of the victim’s own free will, there are two possibilities. One is an accident — he fell through thin ice or was run over by a car, for instance. The other is that he was subjected to premeditated violence, abducted or killed. The accident explanation no longer seems feasible. There are no reports of him in the hospital. So that possibility can be ruled out. That leaves only the other possibility.”

Wallander raised his hand and interrupted her.

“Let’s make an assumption,” he said. “You and I know this happens much more often than you might think. Especially where older men are concerned.”

“You mean that he might have run off with some woman?”

“Something along those lines, yes.”

She shook her head firmly.

“I’ve spoken to Hans about that. He says there are definitely no skeletons in the closet. Håkan has been faithful to Louise throughout their marriage.”

Wallander interrupted again.

“What about Louise? Has she been faithful?”

That was a question Linda hadn’t asked herself, he could see. She hadn’t yet learned all the possible twists that can take place in an interrogation.

“I can’t believe she hasn’t. She’s not the type.”

“Not a good response. You should never say a person is ‘not the type.’ That exposes you to an underestimation.”

“Let me put it this way: I don’t think she’s had any affairs. But obviously, I can’t be certain. Ask her!”

“I have no intention of doing any such thing! It would be a disgraceful move in the current circumstances.”

Wallander hesitated before asking the next question that came into his head.

“You and Hans must have discussed this over the last few days. He can’t have been glued to his computer all the time. What does he have to say? Was he surprised when Håkan vanished?”

“Why wouldn’t he have been surprised?”

“I don’t know. But when I was in Stockholm, I had the impression that Håkan was worried about something.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“Because I tried to banish the thought. I told myself I was imagining things.”

“Your intuition doesn’t usually let you down.”

“Thank you. But I’m becoming less and less sure about that — as I am about so many other things.”

Linda didn’t respond. Wallander studied her face. She’d put on a bit of weight after her pregnancy; her cheeks had become fuller. He could see from her eyes that she was tired. His thoughts turned to Mona, and how she was always angry because he never made any move to help her when Linda woke up crying during the night. I wonder how Linda is really feeling, he thought. When you have a child, it’s as if every heartstring is stretched to the limit. One or two are likely to snap.

“Something tells me you’re right,” she said eventually. “Now that I think about it, I can remember situations, barely noticeable at the time, when he seemed worried. He kept looking over his shoulder.”

“Literally or figuratively?”

“Literally. He kept turning around. I didn’t think about it before.”

“Can you remember anything else?”

“He was very careful about making sure the doors were locked. And he insisted that some lights be left on around the clock.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. But the desk lamp in his study always had to be on, and the light in the hall next to the front door.”

An old naval officer, Wallander thought, making sure navigational channels were properly illuminated during the night by specific lighthouses.

At that point the baby woke up, and Wallander held her until she stopped crying.

On the train to Stockholm, he continued to think about those lights that had to be kept on. It was something he needed to investigate. Perhaps there was an innocent explanation. The same thing might apply to the disappearance of Håkan von Enke. So far he had no idea how to find that out. But he hoped that no matter what, there would be a plausible and undramatic explanation.

6

At the end of the 1970s he and Mona had gone on a trip to Stockholm. Wallander seemed to recall that they stayed at the Maritime Hotel in the Söder district, so he called and reserved a room for two nights. When he got off the train he wondered whether he should go to the hotel by subway or take a taxi. He ended up walking, his heavy bag slung over his shoulder. It was still cold, but it was sunny, and no rain clouds were gathering on the horizon.

As he walked through the Old Town he thought about that trip with Mona. It was her idea. She had suddenly realized that she’d never set foot in the country’s capital city and thought it was high time to remedy such a scandalous omission. They spent four days there. Mona had recently gone back to school and so had no income or paid vacation. They arranged for Linda to stay with a classmate for a few days — she was due to begin third grade in the fall. If his memory served him correctly, it was the beginning of August. Warm days, and the occasional thunderstorm followed by oppressive heat that encouraged them to go for walks through the parks, where they could enjoy the shade of the many trees. That was more than thirty years ago, he thought as he approached Slussen and started walking up the hill to the hotel. Thirty years, a whole generation; and now I’m back. But this time on my own.

When he entered the lobby he didn’t recognize it at all. Had it really been this hotel they’d stayed at? He shook off a sudden feeling of unease, dismissed all thought of the past, and took the elevator up to his room on the second floor. He turned down the bedspread and lay down. It had been a tiring journey — he had been surrounded by screeching children, and to make things worse, a party of drunk young men had joined the train at Alvesta. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. When he woke up with a start he checked the clock and found that he had dozed off for ten minutes at most. He stood up and walked over to the window. What had happened to Håkan von Enke? If he tried to fit together all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, what he had heard from Linda and what he knew from his own experience, what was the result? He didn’t have even the beginnings of a solution.

He had arranged to arrive at Louise’s place at seven o’clock that evening. Once again he decided to walk. As he passed the royal palace, he paused. He had been here with Mona, he was quite sure of that. They had stopped on the bridge where he was now and agreed that their feet hurt. The memory was so vivid that he could hear their conversation echoing in his ears. There were moments when he was overwhelmed by sadness thinking about how their marriage had collapsed. This was one of them. He looked down into the swirling water and thought about how his life was now centered increasingly on recalling things from the past that he now realized he missed.

Louise von Enke had made a pot of tea. She was visibly suffering from lack of sleep, but she was remarkably composed even so. The living room walls were adorned with paintings of the von Enke family and various battle scenes in muted colors. She saw him looking at the pictures.

“Håkan was the first naval officer in the family. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all army officers. One of his uncles was chamberlain to King Oscar — I don’t remember if it was Oscar the First or Second. The sword standing in the corner over there was awarded to another relative by Karl XIV for services rendered. Håkan always says that his job was to supply the king with suitable young ladies.”

She fell silent. Wallander listened to the ticking of a clock on the mantelpiece above an open fire and the distant hum of traffic in the street outside.

“What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t.”

“The day he disappeared, was there anything that felt unusual? Did he behave any differently from the way he usually did?”

“No. Everything was the same as it always was. Håkan has his routines, even if he’s not a pedant.”

“What about the previous days? The week before?”

“He had a cold. One day he skipped his morning walk. That was all.”

“Did he have any mail? Did anyone call him? Did he have any visitors?”

“He spoke once or twice to Sten Nordlander, his closest friend.”

“Was he at the party in Djursholm?”

“No, he was away then. Håkan and Sten met when they worked in the same submarine — Håkan was in command and Sten was chief engineer. That must have been the end of the sixties.”

“What does he have to say about Håkan’s disappearance?”

“Sten is just as worried as everyone else. He can’t explain it either. He said he’d be pleased to talk to you while you’re here.”

She was sitting on a sofa opposite Wallander. The evening sun suddenly illuminated her face. She moved into the shade. Wallander thought she was one of those women who try to hide their beauty behind a mask of plainness. As if she had read his mind, she gave him a hesitant smile. Wallander took out his notebook and wrote down Sten Nordlander’s telephone number. He noticed that she knew it by heart, and his cell number as well.

They spoke for an hour without Wallander feeling that he’d learned anything he didn’t know already. Then she showed him her husband’s study. Wallander examined the desk lamp.

“So this is the lamp he used to have on all night.”

“Who told you that?”

“Linda mentioned it. This lamp and others.”

She closed the thick curtains as she responded. Wallander could detect a faint smell of tobacco.

“He was afraid of the dark,” she said, brushing some dust off one of the heavy, dark-colored curtains. “He thought it was embarrassing. It probably started while he was in his submarines, but it was much later that he became really afraid, long after he’d stopped going to sea. I had to promise never to mention it to a soul.”

“But your son knows about it? And he in turn told Linda...”

“Håkan must have mentioned it to Hans without my knowing.”

The phone rang in the distance.

“Make yourself at home,” she said as she disappeared through the tall double doors.

Wallander found himself eyeing her in the same way he observed Kristina Magnusson. He sat down on the desk chair made of rust brown wood with a green leather back and seat. He looked slowly around the room. He switched on the desk lamp. There was dust around the switch. Wallander ran his finger over the polished mahogany desktop, then lifted up the blotter. That was a habit he had acquired from his early days as an apprentice of Rydberg’s. Whenever they came to a crime scene containing a desk, that was always the first thing Rydberg did. As a rule there was nothing underneath it. But he had explained, in a way that indicated a mysterious subtext, that even blank space could be an important clue.

There were a few pens and pencils on the desk, a magnifying glass, a porcelain vase in the shape of a swan, a small stone, and a box full of thumbtacks. That was all. He swiveled slowly around on the chair and scanned the room. The walls were covered in framed photographs — of submarines and other naval vessels; of Hans wearing the white cap all Swedes get when they pass their graduation exams; of Håkan in his dress uniform, he and Louise walking through a ceremonial arch of swords raised by the honor guard at their wedding; of old people, nearly all the men in uniform. There was also a painting on one of the walls. Wallander went to study it more closely. It was a Romanic depiction of the Battle of Trafalgar, Nelson dying, leaning against a cannon, surrounded by sailors on their knees, all of them crying. The painting surprised him. It was a piece of kitsch in an apartment characterized by good taste. Why had Håkan displayed it? Wallander carefully removed the picture and examined the back. There was nothing written on it. It’s too late to start making a thorough search of the whole room, he thought. It’s nearly eight-thirty, and it would take several hours. It would make more sense to start tomorrow morning. He went back to one of the two connected living rooms. Louise emerged from the kitchen. Wallander thought he could detect a faint whiff of alcohol, but he wasn’t sure. They agreed that he would come back the following day at nine o’clock. Wallander put on his jacket in the hall and prepared to leave, but suddenly he had second thoughts.

“You look tired,” he said. “Are you getting enough sleep?”

“I manage the odd hour here and there. How can I sleep soundly when I don’t know anything?”

“Would you like me to stay overnight?”

“It’s kind of you to offer, but it’s not necessary. I’m used to being on my own. Don’t forget, I’m a sailor’s wife.”

He walked back to his hotel, stopping for dinner at an Italian restaurant that looked cheap. The food confirmed that assumption. In the hope of avoiding a sleepless night, he took half of one of his sleeping pills. Sadly, this seemed to be one of the few pleasures left to him: beckoning the onset of sleep by unscrewing the lid of the white bottle.

The next day began like his visit the previous evening: with Louise offering him a cup of tea. He could see that she had hardly slept a wink.

She had a message to pass on, from Chief Inspector Ytterberg, who was in charge of the investigation into von Enke’s disappearance. Could Wallander please give him a call. She handed him a cordless phone, then stood up and went into the kitchen. Wallander could see her reflection in a wall mirror; she was standing in the middle of the floor, motionless, with her back to him.

Ytterberg spoke with an unmistakable northern accent.

“It’s a full-scale investigation now,” he began. “We’re pretty sure something must have happened to him. I gathered from his wife you were going to work through his papers.”

“Haven’t you done that already?”

“His wife has been through them without finding anything. I assume she wants you to double-check.”

“Do you have any leads at all? Has anyone seen him?”

“Only one unreliable witness who claims to have seen him in Lill-Jansskogen. That’s all.”

There was a pause, and Wallander heard Ytterberg telling someone to go away and come back later.

“I’ll never get used to this,” said Ytterberg when he resumed the conversation. “People seem to have stopped knocking on doors and just barge in.”

“One of these days the national police commissioner will tell us all to sit in open-plan offices in order to increase our efficiency,” said Wallander. “We’ll be able to hear one another’s witnesses and help out in other people’s investigations.”

Ytterberg chuckled. Wallander decided that he had found an excellent contact in the Stockholm police force.

“One more thing,” said Ytterberg. “In his active days, Håkan von Enke was a high-ranking naval officer. So it’s routine that the Säpo crowd will shove an oar in. Our security service colleagues are always on the lookout for a possible spy.”

Wallander was surprised.

“Are you saying he’s under suspicion?”

“Of course not. But they have to have something to show when next year’s budget comes under discussion.”

Wallander moved farther away from the kitchen.

“Just between you and me,” he said in a low voice, “what do you think happened? Forget all the facts — what does your experience tell you?”

“It looks pretty serious. He might have been ambushed in the woods and abducted. That’s what I think is most likely at the moment.”

Ytterberg asked for Wallander’s cell phone number before hanging up. Wallander returned to his cup of tea, thinking he would have much preferred coffee. Louise returned from the kitchen and looked inquiringly at him. Wallander shook his head.

“Nothing new. But they are taking his disappearance extremely seriously.”

She remained standing by the sofa.

“I know he’s dead,” she said out of the blue. “I’ve refused to think the worst so far, but now I can’t put it off any longer.”

“There must be some basis for that conviction,” said Wallander cautiously. “Is there anything in particular that makes you think that way right now?”

“I’ve lived with him for forty years,” she said. “He would never do this to me. Not to me and not to the rest of the family either.”

She hurried out of the room. Wallander heard the bedroom door close. He waited for a moment, then stood up and tiptoed into the hall and listened outside. He could hear her crying. Although he wasn’t an emotional type, he could feel a lump in his throat. He drank the rest of his tea, then went to von Enke’s study, where he had been the previous evening. The curtains were still drawn. He opened them and let in the light. Then he started searching through the desk, one drawer at a time. It was all very neat, with a place for everything. One of the drawers contained several old pipes, pipe cleaners, and something that looked like a duster. He turned his attention to the other pedestal. Everything was just as neatly filed — old school reports, certificates, a pilot’s license. In March 1958 Håkan von Enke had passed a test enabling him to pilot a single-engine plane, conducted at Bromma Airport. So he didn’t spend all his life down in the depths, Wallander thought. He imitated not only the fish, but the birds as well.

Wallander took out von Enke’s reports from the Norra Latin grammar school. He had top grades in history and Swedish, and also in geography. But he only just scraped by in German and religious studies. The next drawer contained a camera and a pair of earphones. When Wallander examined the camera, an old Leica, more closely, he noticed that it still had film. Either twelve pictures had been taken, or there were twelve exposures still available. He put the camera on the desktop. The earphones were also old. He guessed that they might have been state-of-the-art some fifty years ago. Why had von Enke kept them? There was nothing in the bottom drawer apart from a comic book with colored pictures and speech bubbles retelling the story of The Last of the Mohicans. The comic had been read so often that it almost disintegrated in Wallander’s hands. He recalled what Rydberg had once said to him: Always look for something that doesn’t fit in with the rest. What was a copy of Classics Illustrated from 1962 doing in the bottom drawer of Håkan von Enke’s desk?

He didn’t hear Louise approaching. Suddenly she was there, in the doorway. She had removed all trace of her emotional breakdown, and her face was newly powdered. He held up the comic.

“Why did he keep this?”

“I think he got it from his father on a special occasion. He never told me any details.”

She left him to his own devices again. Wallander opened the remaining large drawer, at waist height between the two pedestals. Here the contents were anything but neatly ordered — letters, photographs, old airline tickets, a doctor’s certificate, a few bills. Why was everything jumbled up here, but not anywhere else? He decided to leave the contents of this drawer untouched for the time being, and left it open. The only thing he removed was the doctor’s certificate.

The man he was trying to track down had been vaccinated many times. As recently as three weeks ago he had been vaccinated against yellow fever, and also tetanus and jaundice. Stapled to the certificate was a prescription for antimalarial drugs. Wallander frowned. Yellow fever? Where might you be traveling to if you needed to be vaccinated against that? He returned the document to the drawer without having answered the question.

Wallander stood up and turned his attention to the bookcases. If the books told the truth, Håkan von Enke was very interested in English history and twentieth-century naval developments. There were also books on general history and a lot of political memoirs. Wallander noted that Tage Erlander’s memoirs were standing next to Stig Wennerström’s autobiography. To his surprise Wallander also discovered that von Enke had been interested in modern Swedish poetry. There were names Wallander didn’t recognize, others of poets he knew a little about — such as Sonnevi and Tranströmer. He took out some of the books and noted that they showed signs of having been read. In one of Tranströmer’s books somebody had made notes in the margin, and at one point had written: “Brilliant poem.” Wallander read it, and he agreed. It was about the sighing of coniferous forests. There were what appeared to be the complete works of Ivar Lo-Johansson, and also of Vilhelm Moberg. Wallander’s image of the missing man was changing all the time, deepening. Nothing gave him the impression that the commander was vain and merely wanted to demonstrate to the world that he was interested in the arts. Wallander hated those types.

Wallander left the bookcases and turned his attention to the tall filing cabinet, opening drawer after drawer. Files, letters, reports, several private diaries, drawings of submarines labeled “Types commanded by me.” Everything was neat and tidy, apart from that desk drawer. Nevertheless, something was nagging at Wallander without his being able to put his finger on it. He sat down at the desk again, and contemplated the open filing cabinet. There was a brown leather armchair in one corner of the room, a table, and a reading lamp with a red shade. Wallander moved from the desk chair to the reading chair. There were two books on the table, both of them open. One was old, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. He knew it was one of the first books warning that the advance of Western civilization constituted a threat to the future of the planet. The other book was about Swedish butterflies — short blocks of text interspersed with color photographs. Butterflies and a planet under threat, Wallander thought. And a chaotic desk drawer. He couldn’t see how the various parts fit together.

Then he noticed a corner of a magazine sticking out from under the armchair. He bent down and picked up an English, or possibly American, journal on naval vessels. Wallander thumbed through it. There was everything from articles on the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan to sketches of submarines still at the drawing-board stage. Wallander put the magazine down and looked again at the filing cabinet. Seeing without seeing. That was something Rydberg had warned him about: not noticing what you were really looking for. He went through the filing cabinet once again and found a duster in one of the drawers. So he keeps everything in here spotless, Wallander thought. Not a speck of dust on any of his papers, everything shipshape. He sat down on the desk chair and looked again at the open drawer that was such a mess, unlike everything else. He started to work his way carefully through the contents, but he found nothing to raise an eyebrow. All that worried him was the mess. It stuck out like a sore thumb; it didn’t seem to be how Håkan von Enke would have arranged things. Or did chaos come naturally to him, and it was the orderliness that broke the pattern?

He stood up and ran his hand over the top of the unusually tall filing cabinet; there was a folder lying out of sight, and he took it down. It contained a report about the political situation in Cambodia, written by Robert Jackson and Evelyn Harrison, whoever they might be. Wallander was surprised to discover that it came from the U.S. Department of Defense. It was dated March 2008, only just out. Whoever had read it had evidently felt strongly about it, underlining several sentences and making margin notes with big, forceful exclamation marks. It was titled On the Challenges of Cambodia, Based on the Legacies of the Pol Pot Regime.

He went back into the living room. The teacups had been cleared away. Louise was standing at one of the windows, gazing down into the street. When he cleared his throat, she turned so quickly that she gave the impression of being frightened, and Wallander was reminded of the way her husband had behaved at the party in Djursholm — the same kind of reaction, he thought. They are both worried, scared, and seem to be under some kind of threat.

He hadn’t intended to ask the question, but it simply came out of its own accord when he remembered Djursholm.

“Did he have a gun?”

“No. Not anymore. Håkan probably had one when he was still on duty. But here at home? No, he’s never had one here.”

“Do you have a summer cottage?”

“We’ve talked about buying a place, but we never got around to it. When Hans was little we used to spend every summer on the island of Utö. In recent years we’ve gone to the Riviera and rented an apartment.”

“Is there anywhere else he might keep a gun?”

“No. Why are you asking?”

“Perhaps he has some kind of store somewhere. Do you have an attic? Or a basement?”

“We keep some old furniture and souvenirs from his childhood in a room in the basement. But I can’t believe there could be a gun there.”

She left the room and came back with a key to a padlock. Wallander put it in his pocket. Louise asked him if he’d like more tea, but Wallander said no. He couldn’t bring himself to say that he would love a cup of coffee.

He went back to the study and continued leafing through the report on Cambodia. Why had it been lying on top of the filing cabinet? There was a footstool beside the easy chair. Wallander placed it in front of the filing cabinet and stood on tiptoe so that he could see the top of the cabinet. It was covered in dust, except for where the folder had been lying. Wallander replaced the stool and remained standing. It suddenly dawned on him what had attracted his attention. There seemed to be papers missing, especially in the filing cabinet. To make sure, Wallander worked his way through everything one more time, both the things in the desk drawers and those in the filing cabinet. Everywhere, he found traces of documents having been removed. Could Håkan have done it himself? That was a possibility; or it could have been Louise.

Wallander went back to the living room. Louise was sitting on a chair that Wallander suspected was very old. She was staring at her hands. She stood up when he came into the room and asked again if he would like a cup of tea. He accepted this time. He waited until she had poured his tea, and noticed that she didn’t take a cup herself.

“I can’t find anything,” Wallander said. “Could someone have been through his papers?”

She looked quizzically at him. Her tiredness made her face look gray, almost twisted.

“I’ve been searching through them, of course. But who else could have?”

“I don’t know, but it looks as if some papers are missing, as if disorder has been introduced into all those neat and tidy files. I could be wrong.”

“No one has been in his study since the day he disappeared. Except for me, naturally.”

“I know we’ve talked about this already, but let me ask you again. Was he neat by nature?”

“He hated untidiness.”

“But he wasn’t a pedant, I seem to remember you saying.”

“When we have visitors for dinner, he always helps me set the table. He checks to make sure the cutlery and glasses are where they should be. But he doesn’t use a ruler to get the lines exactly right. Does that answer your question?”

“It certainly does,” said Wallander gracefully.

Wallander drank his tea, then went down to the basement to take a look at the family’s storeroom. It contained a few old suitcases, a rocking horse, plastic boxes full of toys used by earlier generations, not just Hans. Leaning against the wall were some skis and a dismantled device for developing photographic negatives.

Wallander sat down cautiously on the rocking horse. The thought struck him as suddenly and relentlessly as the thugs had attacked him only a few days ago: Håkan von Enke was dead. There was no other possible explanation. He was dead.

That realization not only made him feel sad, it also troubled him.

Håkan von Enke was trying to tell me something, he thought. But unfortunately, in that bunker in Djursholm, I didn’t understand what.

7

Wallander was woken up as dawn was breaking by a young couple arguing in the room next door. The walls were so thin that he could hear clearly the harsh words they were exchanging. He got out of bed and rummaged through his toiletry bag for a pair of earplugs, but he had evidently left them at home. He banged on the wall, two heavy blows followed by one more, as if he were sending one final swearword via his fist. The argument ceased abruptly — or maybe they continued arguing in voices so low that he couldn’t hear what they were saying. Before going back to sleep he tried to recall if he and Mona had also had an argument in the hotel when they visited the capital. It happened occasionally that they dredged up pointless trivialities — always trivialities, never anything really serious — that made them angry. Our confrontations were never colorful, he thought, always gray. We were miserable or disappointed, or both at the same time, and we knew it would soon pass. But we would argue nonetheless, and we were both equally stupid and said things we immediately regretted. We used to send whole flocks of birds shooting out of our mouths and never managed to grab them by their wings.

He fell asleep and dreamed about somebody — Rydberg, perhaps, or possibly his father? — standing in the rain, waiting for him. But he had been delayed, perhaps by his car breaking down, and he knew he would be told off for arriving late.

After breakfast he sat in the lobby and dialed Sten Nordlander. Wallander began with his home number. No reply. No reply on the cell either, although he was able to leave a message. He said his name and his business. But what was his business, in fact? Searching for the missing Håkan von Enke was a job for the Stockholm police, not for him. Perhaps he could be regarded as a sort of improvising private detective — a title that had acquired a bad reputation after the murder of Olof Palme.

His train of thought was interrupted by his cell phone ringing. It was Sten Nordlander. His voice was rough and deep.

“I know who you are,” he said. “Both Håkan and Louise have talked about you. Where can I pick you up?”

Wallander was waiting on the sidewalk when Sten Nordlander pulled up. His car was a Dodge from the mid-fifties, covered in shiny chrome and with whitewall tires. No doubt Nordlander had been a sort of Teddy Boy in his youth. Even now he was wearing a leather jacket, American-style boots, jeans, and a thin undershirt despite the cold weather. Wallander couldn’t help wondering how on earth von Enke and Nordlander had become such good friends. At first glance he found it impossible to think of two people who seemed more different. But judging by outward appearances was always dangerous. That reminded him of one of Rydberg’s favorite sayings: Outward appearances are something you should nearly always ignore.

“Jump in,” said Sten Nordlander.

Wallander didn’t ask where they were going; he merely sank back into the red leather seat that was no doubt authentic. He asked a few polite questions about the car, and received similarly polite answers. Then they sat in silence. Two large dice in woolly material were swinging back and forth in the rear window. Wallander had seen lots of similar cars in his early youth. Behind the wheel were always middle-aged men wearing suits that glistened just as much as the chrome fittings on the cars. They came to buy up his father’s paintings by the dozen, and paid in notes peeled off thick bundles. He used to call them “the Silk Knights.” He discovered later they had humiliated his father by paying far too little for his paintings.

The memory made him feel sad. But it was in the past, impossible to resurrect.

There were no seat belts in the car. Nordlander saw that Wallander was looking for one.

“This is a classic car,” he said. “It’s excused from the obligatory seat belts.”

They eventually came to somewhere or other on Värmdö — Wallander had lost his sense of distance and direction long ago. Nordlander pulled up outside a brown-painted building containing a café.

“The woman who owns the café used to be married to one of Håkan’s and my mutual friends,” said Nordlander. “She’s a widow now. Her name’s Matilda. Her husband, Claes Hornvig, was first officer on a Snake that both Håkan and I worked on.”

Wallander nodded. He recalled that Håkan von Enke had referred to that class of submarine.

“We try to give her business whenever we can. She needs the money. And besides, she serves pretty good coffee.”

The first thing Wallander noticed when he entered the café was a periscope standing in the middle of the floor. Nordlander explained which decommissioned submarine it had come from, and it dawned on Wallander that he was in a private museum for submarines.

“It’s become a habit,” explained Nordlander. “Anyone who ever served on a Swedish submarine makes at least one pilgrimage to Matilda’s café. And they always bring something with them — it’s unthinkable not to. Some stolen china, perhaps, or a blanket, or even items from the controls. Bonanza time of course was when submarines were being decommissioned and sent to the scrap yard. Lots of ex-servicemen turned up to collect souvenirs, and there was always somebody determined to find something to grace Matilda’s collection. The money didn’t matter; it was a question of salvaging something from the dead submarine.”

A woman in her twenties emerged from the swinging doors leading into the kitchen.

“Matilda and Claes’s granddaughter Marie,” said Nordlander. “Matilda still puts in an appearance now and again, but she’s over ninety now. She claims that her mother lived to be a hundred and one and her grandmother a hundred and three.”

“That’s right,” said the girl. “My mom’s fifty. She says she’s only lived half her life.”

They were served a tray of coffee and pastries. Nordlander also helped himself to a slice of cheesecake. There were a few other customers at other tables, most of them elderly.

“Former submarine crew?” Wallander wondered as they made their way to the room farthest away from the street, which was empty.

“Not necessarily,” said Nordlander. “But I do recognize some of them.”

This room in the heart of the café had old uniforms and signal flags hanging from the walls. Wallander had the feeling that he was in a props store for military films. They sat down at a table in the corner. On the wall beside them was a framed black-and-white photograph. Sten Nordlander pointed it out.

“There you have one of our Sea Snakes. Number two in the second row is me. Number four is Håkan. Claes Hornvig wasn’t with us on that occasion.”

Wallander leaned forward in order to get a better view. It wasn’t easy to distinguish the various faces. Nordlander informed him that the picture had been taken in Karlskrona, just before they had set off on a long trip.

“I suppose it wasn’t exactly our ideal voyage,” he said. “We were due to go from Karlskrona up to the Kvarken straits, then on to Kalix and back home again. It was November, freezing cold. If I remember correctly there was a storm blowing the whole time. The ship was tossing and turning something awful — the Baltic Sea is so shallow, we could never get down deep enough. The Baltic Sea is nothing more than a pool.”

Nordlander attacked the pastries with eager intent. It didn’t seem to matter what they tasted like. But suddenly he laid down his fork.

“What happened?” he said.

“I know no more than you or Louise.”

Nordlander pushed his coffee cup violently to one side. Wallander could see that he was just as tired as Louise. Someone else who can’t get to sleep, he thought.

“You know him,” Wallander said, “better than most. Louise said you and Håkan were very close. If that’s the case, then your view of events is more important than most others.”

“You sound just like the police officer I spoke to in Bergsgatan.”

“But I am a police officer!”

Sten Nordlander nodded. He was very tense. You could tell how worried he was from his fixed expression and his tight lips.

“How come you weren’t at his seventy-fifth birthday party?” Wallander asked.

“I have a sister who lives in Bergen, in Norway. Her husband died unexpectedly. She needed my help. Besides, I’m not exactly a fan of big dos like that. Håkan and I had our own celebration. A week earlier.”

“Where?”

“Here. With coffee and cookies.”

Nordlander pointed to a naval cap hanging on the wall.

“That’s Håkan’s. He made a present of it when we had our little celebration.”

“What did you talk about?”

“What we always talk about. What happened in October 1982. I was serving on the destroyer Halland. It was about to be decommissioned. It’s now a museum piece in Gothenburg.”

“So you weren’t only a chief engineer on submarines?”

“I started out on a torpedo boat, then it was a corvette, then a destroyer, then a submarine, and in the end back to a destroyer. We were deployed to the west coast when the submarines started appearing in the Baltic Sea. At about noon on October 2, Commander Nyman announced that we should head for the Stockholm archipelago at full speed because we were needed as backup.”

“Were you in contact with Håkan during those hectic days?”

“He called me.”

“At home or on board?”

“On the destroyer. I was never at home then. All leave was canceled. We were on red alert, you could say. Bear in mind that this was the blissful time before cell phones had become common currency. The sailors manning the destroyer’s telephone exchange would come down and inform us that we had a call. Håkan usually called at night. He wanted me to receive his call in my cabin.”

“Why?”

“I suppose he didn’t want anybody else to hear what we were talking about.”

There was something surly and reluctant in the way Sten Nordlander answered questions. He sat there mashing the remains of the pastry with his fork.

“We spoke to each other practically every night between the first and the fifteenth of October. I don’t think he was supposed to talk to me the way he did, but we trusted each other. His responsibility weighed heavily on his shoulders. A depth charge can go off course and sink a submarine instead of forcing it up to the surface.”

By now Nordlander had turned the remains of his pastry into an unappetizing mess. He put down his fork and dropped a paper napkin over his plate.

“He called me three times that last night. Very late — or rather, early: it was dawn when he called the last time.”

“And you were still on board the destroyer?”

“We were less than a nautical mile southeast of Hårsfjärden. It was windy, but not too bad. We were on full alert. The officers were informed about what was happening, of course, but the rest of the crew knew only that we were ready for action, not why.”

“Were you really going to be ordered to start hunting down the submarine?”

“We couldn’t know what the Russians would do if we forced one of their submarines to surface. Perhaps they might try to rescue it? There were Russian vessels north of Gotland, and they were moving slowly in our direction. One of our radio officers said he’d never experienced so much Russian radio traffic before, not even during their major maneuvers along the Baltic coast. They were agitated, that was obvious.”

He paused when Marie came in and asked if they wanted any more coffee. Both said no.

“Let’s consider the most important thing,” said Wallander. “How did you react to the order to let the trapped submarine go?”

“I couldn’t believe my ears.”

“How did you hear about it?”

“Nyman suddenly received an order to back off, proceed to Landsort, and wait there. No explanation was given, and Nyman wasn’t the type to ask unnecessary questions. I was in the engine room when I was told there was a phone call for me. I ran up to my cabin. It was Håkan. He asked if I was alone.”

“Did he usually do that?”

“Not usually, no. I said I was. He insisted it was important that I speak the truth. I remember feeling angry about that. Then I realized he had left the operations room and was calling from a phone booth.”

“How could you know that? Did he say so?”

“I heard him inserting coins. There was a phone booth in the officer’s mess. Since he couldn’t be away from the command center for more than a couple of minutes, only as long as it would take to go to the bathroom, he must have run there.”

“Did he say so?”

Nordlander looked searchingly at him.

“Is it you or me who’s the policeman here? I could hear that he was out of breath!”

Wallander didn’t allow himself to be provoked. He merely nodded, indicating that Nordlander should continue.

“He was agitated, both furious and scared, I think you could say. He insisted that it was treason, and that he was going to disobey orders and bomb that damned submarine up to the surface no matter what they said. Then his money ran out. It was as if somebody had cut through a tape.”

Wallander stared at him, waiting for a continuation that never came.

“That’s a strong word to use. Treason?”

“But that’s exactly what it was! They released a submarine that had invaded our territorial waters.”

“Who was responsible?”

“Somebody in the high command, possibly more than one person, who got extremely cold feet. They didn’t want to force a Russian submarine up to the surface.”

A man carrying a cup of coffee came into the room, but Nordlander glared so aggressively at him that he turned immediately and went to look for a table in another room.

“I don’t know who was responsible. It might be easier to answer the question Why? but even so it would only be speculation. What you don’t know, you don’t know.”

“Sometimes it’s necessary to think aloud. Even for police officers.”

“Let’s suppose there was something on board that submarine that the Swedish authorities couldn’t be allowed to get their hands on.”

“What might that be?”

Sten Nordlander lowered his voice — not much, but sufficiently for Wallander to notice.

“Maybe you could extend that assumption and suggest that it wasn’t ‘something’ but ‘someone.’ How would it have looked if it turned out there was a Swedish officer on board? For example.”

“What makes you think that?”

“It wasn’t my idea. It was one of Håkan’s theories. He had lots of them.”

Wallander thought for a moment before continuing. He realized that he should have noted down everything Nordlander said.

“What happened after that?”

“After what?”

Nordlander was starting to get cross. But whether it was because of all the questions or due to worry in connection with his friend’s disappearance, Wallander couldn’t decide.

“Håkan told me that he started to ask questions,” Wallander said.

“He tried to find out what had happened. But nearly everything was top secret, of course. Some documents were even classified as ultra-secret so that they would remain under lock and key for seventy years. That’s the longest time anything can be kept secret in Sweden. The normal limit is forty years. But in this case some of the papers were embargoed for seventy years. In all probability not even that nice little Marie who served us coffee and pastries will live long enough to be able to read them.”

“But then again, she belongs to a family with good genes,” said Wallander.

Sten Nordlander didn’t react.

“Håkan could be difficult if he’d set his mind on something,” Nordlander continued. “He felt just as violated as the Swedish territorial waters had been. Someone had failed in their duty, and failed in spades. A lot of journalists started digging into the submarines incident, but that wasn’t good enough for Håkan. He really wanted to know the truth. He staked his career on it.”

“Who did he speak to?”

Nordlander’s reply came quickly, like a crack of the whip in order to buck up an invisible horse.

“Everybody. He asked everybody you can think of. Perhaps not the king, but you never know. He asked for an interview with the prime minister, that’s definite. He called Thage G. Peterson, that fine old Social Democrat in the cabinet office, and asked for a meeting with Palme. Peterson said the PM’s diary was full, but Håkan wouldn’t be put off. ‘Get out the reserve diary then,’ he insisted. ‘The one in which urgent meetings can always be fitted in.’ And he actually did get an interview. A few days before Christmas 1983.”

“Did he tell you about it?”

“I was with him.”

“When he met Palme?”

“I was his chauffeur that day, you could say. I sat in the car outside, waiting for him, after watching him, in his dress uniform and a dark overcoat, vanish through the entrance door to the most exalted dwelling in the land after the royal palace. The visit lasted about half an hour. After ten minutes a traffic cop knocked on the window and said that drop-offs were allowed but parking was forbidden. I rolled down the window and informed him that I was waiting for somebody currently discussing very important business with the prime minister and had no intention of moving. After that I was left in peace. When Håkan eventually came back, there were beads of sweat on his forehead.”

They had driven off in silence.

“We came here,” said Sten Nordlander. “And we sat at this very table. As we got out of the car it started snowing. We had a white Christmas in Stockholm that year. It stayed white until New Year’s Eve. Then it rained.”

Marie returned with her coffeepot. This time they both had their cups refilled. When Sten Nordlander complied with Swedish tradition and popped a cube of sugar into his mouth before taking a sip of coffee, Wallander noticed that he had false teeth. The discovery made him feel sick for a few moments. Perhaps because it reminded him that he should visit the dentist far more often than he did.

According to Sten Nordlander, von Enke gave a detailed account of his meeting with Olof Palme. He had been well received. Palme asked a few questions about his military career, and spoke ironically about his own status as a reserve officer. Palme listened attentively to what von Enke had to say. And what he had to say was unambiguous. When it came to his relationship with his employer, the Swedish defense forces, von Enke had violated every convention there was. By approaching the prime minister on his own initiative he had burned all bridges with the supreme commander and his staff. There was no going back now. He felt obliged to say exactly what he thought about the whole business. He spoke for over ten minutes before coming to the main point. And Palme listened, he said. With his mouth half open, and looking him in the eye from start to finish. Afterward, when von Enke had reached the end of his diatribe, Palme thought for a while before asking questions. He wanted to know first of all if the military had been certain about the nationality of the submarine, and if it definitely was from one of the Warsaw Pact countries. Håkan responded by asking a different question, Nordlander said. He wondered where else it could have come from. Palme didn’t reply, merely pulled a face and shook his head. When Håkan started to speak about treason and a military and political scandal, Palme interrupted and said this was a discussion that should take place in a different context, not during a private interview with the prime minister. That was as far as they got. A secretary peered discreetly around the door and reminded Palme of another meeting that was scheduled to begin. When Håkan came out he was sweating, but also relieved. Palme had listened to him, he said. He was full of optimism and convinced that things would now start moving. The prime minister doubtless understood what Håkan had said about treason. He would corner his minister of defense and his supreme commander and demand an explanation. Who had opened the cage and let the submarine escape? And above all, why?

Sten Nordlander glanced at his watch.

“What happened next?” Wallander asked after a short pause.

“It was Christmas. Everything stood still for a few days, but just before the New Year, Håkan was summoned to the supreme commander. He was given a stern reprimand for going behind his superior’s back and meeting Olof Palme. But Håkan was bright enough to realize that the main criticism was aimed at the prime minister, who should never have agreed to meet a naval officer who had gone astray.”

“But Håkan must have continued to ferret away? Surely he didn’t give up, despite having been reprimanded.”

“He’s continued ferreting away ever since. For twenty-five years.”

“You are his closest friend. He must have spoken to you about the threats he received.”

Nordlander nodded, but said nothing.

“And now he’s disappeared.”

“He’s dead. Somebody killed him.”

The response came promptly and firmly. Nordlander talked about Håkan’s death as if it were obvious.

“How can you be so sure?”

“What is there to be doubtful about?”

“Who killed him? And why?”

“I don’t know. But perhaps he knew something that eventually became too dangerous.”

“It’s been twenty-five years since those submarines entered Swedish waters. What could be dangerous after all these years? Good lord, the Soviet Union no longer exists. The Berlin Wall has come down. And East Germany? All that belongs to a bygone era. What specters could suddenly emerge now?”

“We think it’s all over and done with, that the final curtain has fallen. But it could be that somebody merely stepped into the wings and changed costume. The repertoire may be different, but everything is being acted out on the same stage.”

Sten Nordlander stood up.

“We can continue another day. My wife is expecting me now.”

He drove Wallander back to his hotel. Just before they parted, Wallander realized he had another question to ask.

“Was anyone else really close to Håkan?”

“No one was close to Håkan. Except Louise, perhaps. Old sea dogs are usually reserved. They like to keep to themselves. I wasn’t really close to him myself. I suppose you could say we were close-ish, if that’s possible.”

Wallander could tell that Nordlander was hesitant about something. Was he going to say it, or wasn’t he?

“Steven Atkins,” said Nordlander. “An American submarine captain. A year or so younger. I think he’ll be seventy-five next year.”

Wallander took out his notebook and wrote down the name.

“Do you have an address?”

“He lives in California, not far from San Diego. He used to be stationed at Groton, the big naval base.”

Wallander wondered why Louise hadn’t mentioned Steven Atkins. But that wasn’t something Wallander wanted to trouble Nordlander about — he seemed to be in a hurry and was revving the engine impatiently.

Wallander watched the gleaming car drive off up the hill.

Then he went to his room and thought about what he had heard. But there was still no sign of Håkan von Enke, and Wallander felt that he wasn’t a single step closer to solving the problem.

8

The following morning Linda called to ask how Stockholm was. He didn’t beat around the bush but told her Louise seemed to be convinced that Håkan was no longer alive.

“Hans refuses to believe that,” she said. “He’s certain that his father isn’t dead.”

“But deep down he probably suspects it’s as bad as Louise says.”

“What do you think?”

“It doesn’t look good.”

Wallander asked if she had spoken to anyone in Ystad. He knew she was sometimes in touch with Kristina Magnusson privately.

“The internal affairs team has returned to Malmö,” she said. “That probably means they’ll be reaching a decision on your case any time now.”

“I might get the boot,” Wallander said.

She sounded almost indignant when she responded.

“It was incredibly silly of you to take the pistol to the restaurant with you, but if that leads to you getting fired we can assume that several hundred other Swedish police officers will get their marching orders as well. For much worse breaches of discipline.”

“I’m assuming the worst,” said Wallander gloomily.

“When you’ve shrugged off that self-pity we can talk again,” she said and hung up.

Wallander thought she was right, of course. He would probably get a warning, possibly a fine. He picked up the phone again to call her back but thought better of it. There was too big a risk that they might start arguing. He got dressed, had breakfast, and then called Ytterberg, who had promised to see him at nine o’clock. Wallander asked if they had any leads, but they didn’t.

“We got a tip that von Enke had been seen in Södertälje,” said Ytterberg. “God only knows why he should want to go there. But there was nothing in it. It was just a man in a uniform. And our friend wasn’t wearing a uniform when he set off on his long walk.”

“All the same, it’s odd that nobody seems to have seen him,” said Wallander. “As I understand it, lots of people go jogging or walk their dogs in Lill-Jansskogen.”

“I agree,” said Ytterberg. “That’s something that worries us as well. But nobody seems to have seen him at all. Come at nine o’clock and we can have a chat. I’ll be waiting for you in reception.”

Ytterberg was tall and powerfully built, and reminded Wallander of a well-known Swedish wrestler. He glanced at Ytterberg’s ears to see if there was any of the cauliflower-like disfigurement so common among wrestlers, but he could see no sign of an earlier wrestling career. Despite his bulk, Ytterberg was light on his feet. They hardly touched the ground as he hurried along the hallways with Wallander in tow. They eventually came to a messy office with a gigantic inflatable dolphin lying in the middle of the floor.

“It’s for one of my grandchildren,” Ytterberg explained. “Anna Laura Constance is going to get it for her ninth birthday on Friday. Do you have any grandchildren?”

“I’ve just gotten my first. A granddaughter.”

“Named?”

“Nothing yet. They’re waiting for a name to emerge of its own accord.”

Ytterberg muttered something inaudible and flopped down on his chair. He pointed to a coffeemaker on the windowsill, but Wallander shook his head.

“We are assuming that he’s been the victim of a violent crime,” said Ytterberg. “He’s been missing for too long. The whole business is very odd. Not a single clue. There were lots of people in the woods, but nobody saw anything. It’s the nearest you can get to going up in smoke. It doesn’t make sense.”

“So he deviated from his routine and didn’t go there at all, is that it?”

“Or maybe something happened to him before he got as far as the woods. Whatever the facts are, it’s very odd that nobody saw anything. You can’t just kill a man in Valhallavägen without anyone noticing. Nor can you just drag somebody into a car without a fuss.”

“Could he have disappeared willingly, then, despite everything?”

“That seems to be the obvious conclusion to draw. But then again, nothing else suggests that.”

Wallander nodded.

“You said Säpo had shown an interest in his disappearance. Have they been able to make a contribution?”

Ytterberg screwed up his eyes, looked at Wallander, and leaned back in his chair.

“Since when has Säpo made a sensible contribution to anything at all in this country? They say it’s just routine to take an interest when a high-ranking military officer disappears, even if he did retire ages ago.”

Ytterberg poured himself a cup of coffee. Wallander shook his head again.

“Von Enke seemed to be worried at his seventy-fifth birthday party,” he said.

Wallander had decided that Ytterberg was reliable, so he told him in detail about the episode in the conservatory when von Enke had seemed frightened.

“I also had the impression,” Wallander went on, “that there was something he wanted to tell me. But nothing he said explained his agitation, or seemed a significant confidence.”

“But he was afraid?”

“I think so. I remember thinking that a submarine commander is hardly the type to worry about imagined dangers. Spending so much time under the sea should have made him immune to that.”

“I know what you mean,” said Ytterberg thoughtfully.

An excited female voice suddenly started screeching in the hallway. Wallander gathered that she was objecting vehemently to being “interrogated by a damn buffoon.” Then everything was quiet again.

“One thing gave me food for thought,” said Wallander. “I searched his study in the apartment in Grevgatan and had the impression that someone had been rummaging around in his files. It’s hard to be more precise, but you know what it’s like. You discover a kind of system in the way a person puts his belongings in order, especially the many documents we all accumulate — the flotsam and jetsam of our lives, as an old chief inspector once put it to me. But then it breaks down. There are strange gaps. In general everything was very neat, but one desk drawer was a real mess.”

“What did his wife say?”

“That nobody had been there.”

“In that case there are only two possibilities. Either she’s been rummaging around, but for some reason doesn’t want to admit it. It could be simply that she doesn’t want to admit to her curiosity — perhaps she finds it embarrassing, who knows? Or he did it himself.”

Wallander thought hard about what Ytterberg had said. There was something he should have picked up on, a link that suddenly occurred to him, only to fade away again just as quickly. He hadn’t managed to pin it down.

“What about the secret service boys? Säpo?” Wallander wondered. “Could they have something on him? An old suspicion lying in a dusty drawer somewhere that recently became interesting again?”

“I asked them that exact question. And got a very vague answer. It could mean almost anything. It could well be that the man they sent to see me didn’t know any details. That’s not impossible. We’ve all suspected that Säpo has quite a few secrets they keep to themselves even if they seem bad at staying quiet about what they know.”

“But was there anything on von Enke?”

Ytterberg flung out his arms wide and accidentally hit his coffee cup, which tipped over and spilled. He hurled the cup angrily into the garbage can, then wiped down his desktop and all the soaking wet documents with a towel that had been lying on a shelf behind the desk. Wallander suspected that the coffee cup episode was not a one-off.

“There was nothing at all,” Ytterberg said when he had finished wiping. “Håkan von Enke is a thoroughly honest and honorable member of the Swedish military. I spoke to somebody whose name I forget who has access to the records of naval officers. Håkan von Enke was promoted rapidly, became a commander very quickly. But then things came to a halt. His career leveled off, you might say.”

Wallander thought for a while, his chin resting on his hand, remembering what Sten Nordlander had said about von Enke putting his career on the line. Ytterberg was cleaning his fingernails with a letter opener. Somebody passed by in the hall, whistling. To his surprise Wallander recognized the tune — it was an old hit song from World War II. “We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when...” He hummed it quietly to himself.

“How long are you staying in Stockholm?” Ytterberg asked, breaking the silence.

“I’m going back home this afternoon.”

“Give me your phone number and I’ll keep you informed.”

Ytterberg escorted him as far as the door leading to Bergsgatan. Wallander walked toward Kungsholmstorg, flagged down a taxi, and returned to his hotel. He went to his room, hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door handle, and lay down on the bed. He journeyed back in his mind to the birthday party in Djursholm. He thought of it in terms of taking off his shoes and approaching on tiptoe his recollections of how Håkan von Enke had behaved and what he had said. He reviewed his memories for anything that didn’t ring true. Perhaps he had been wrong. Maybe what he had diagnosed as fear wasn’t that at all. A person’s facial expression can be interpreted in many different ways. Nearsighted people who screw up their eyes are sometimes mistaken for rude or contemptuous. The man he was trying to track down had been missing now for six days. Wallander knew they had now passed the point where most missing persons are found. After such a long time, they either return or at least show some sign of life. But there was no trace at all of Håkan von Enke.

He simply vanished, Wallander told himself. He went out for a walk and didn’t come back. His passport was at home; he had no money with him; he didn’t even take his cell phone. The phone was one of the points that made Wallander stop and think. It was a riddle that demanded a solution, an answer. Håkan could simply have forgotten the phone, of course. But why do so the morning he disappeared? It seemed implausible and strengthened the probability of the theory that his disappearance was not voluntary.

Wallander prepared for the journey back to Ystad. An hour before the train was due to leave, he had lunch at a restaurant near the station. He passed the time on the train by solving a couple of crossword puzzles. As usual there were a few words he couldn’t figure out, and he was forced to sit there worrying about them. He was back at his house by nine o’clock. When he collected Jussi he was almost bowled over by the dog’s delight at being reunited with him.

Wallander called Martinsson’s direct line at the police station. Martinsson’s recorded voice informed him that he was away all day at a seminar in Lund on illegal immigration. Wallander wondered if he should call Kristina Magnusson, but he decided not to. He solved a couple more crosswords, defrosted the freezer, then went for a long walk with Jussi. He felt bored and restless as a result of not being able to work. When the phone rang he grabbed the receiver. A young woman with a chirpy voice asked him if he was interested in a massage machine that could be stored in a closet and took up very little space even when it was in use. Wallander slammed the receiver down, but then regretted snapping at the girl, who hadn’t done anything to deserve it.

The phone rang again. He wondered if he should answer, but after a pause, he did. There was a crackling noise in the background, as if the call was coming from far away. Eventually he heard a voice.

It was speaking English.

It was a man who asked if he was talking to the right person: he was hoping to reach Kurt, Kurt Wallander.

“That’s me,” shouted Wallander in an attempt to make himself heard through all the background noise. “Who are you?”

It seemed as if contact had been lost. Wallander was just about to replace the receiver when the voice became audible again, more clearly now, nearer.

“Wallander?” he said. “Is that you, Kurt?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“Steven Atkins here. Do you know who I am?”

“Yes, I know,” Wallander shouted. “Håkan’s friend.”

“Has he been found yet?”

“No.”

“Did you say ‘no’?”

“Yes, I said ‘no.’ ”

“So he’s been missing for a week now?”

“Yes, more or less.”

The line started crackling again. Wallander assumed Atkins was using a cell phone.

“I’m getting worried,” Atkins shouted. “He’s not the kind of man who simply vanishes.”

“When did you last speak to him?”

“On Sunday last week. In the afternoon. Swedish time.”

The day before he disappeared, Wallander thought.

“Was it you who called, or did he call you?”

“He called me. He said he’d reached a conclusion.”

“What about?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

“Is that all? A conclusion? Surely he must have said something else?”

“Not at all. He was always very careful when he spoke on the phone. Sometimes he called from a public phone.”

The line crackled and faded again. Wallander held his breath; he didn’t want to lose the call.

“I want to know what’s going on,” said Atkins. “I’m worried.”

“Did he say anything about going away?”

“He sounded happier than he had been in a while. Håkan could be very gloomy. He didn’t like growing old; he was afraid of running out of time. How old are you, Kurt?”

“I’m sixty.”

“That’s nothing. Do you have an e-mail address, Kurt?”

Wallander spelled out his address with some difficulty, but he didn’t mention that he hardly ever used it.

“I’ll send you a message, Kurt,” Atkins shouted. “Why don’t you come over and visit? But find Håkan first!”

His voice grew fainter again, and then the connection was broken. Wallander stood there with the receiver in his hand. Why don’t you come over? He replaced the receiver and sat down at the kitchen table, notepad and pencil in hand. Steven Atkins had given him new information, straight into his ear, from distant California. He thought back through the conversation with Atkins, line by line, point by point. The day before he disappeared, Håkan von Enke called California — not Sten Nordlander or his son. Was that a conscious choice? Had that particular call come from a public phone? Had von Enke gone out into the streets of Stockholm in order to make that call? It was a question with no answer. He continued writing until he had worked his way meticulously through the whole conversation. Then he stood up, stood some six feet away from the table, and stared at his notebook, like a painter studying what was on his easel from a distance. It was Sten Nordlander, of course, who had given Steven Atkins Wallander’s phone number. That wasn’t especially surprising. Atkins was just as worried as everybody else. Or was he? Wallander suddenly had the feeling that Håkan von Enke had been standing next to Steven Atkins when he made that call to Sweden. Then he dismissed the thought.

Wallander was growing tired of this case. It wasn’t his job to track down the missing person or to speculate about the various circumstances. He was filling his inactivity with specters. Perhaps this was a test run for all the misery he would be bound to endure once he had also gone into retirement?

He prepared a meal, did some cleaning, then tried to read a book he had been given by Linda — about the history of the police force in Sweden. He was dozing off over the book when the phone woke him.

It was Ytterberg.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” he began.

“Not at all. I was reading.”

“We’ve made a discovery,” said Ytterberg. “I thought you should know.”

“A dead body?”

“Burned to a cinder. We found him a few hours ago in a burned-out boardinghouse on Lidingö. Not that far from Lill-Jansskogen. The age is about right, but there’s no firm evidence that it’s him. We’re not saying anything to his wife or to anybody else right now.”

“What about the press?”

“We’re saying nothing at all to them.”

Wallander slept badly again that night. He kept getting out of bed, starting to read his book then putting it down again almost immediately. Jussi was lying in front of the open fire, watching him. Wallander sometimes allowed him to sleep indoors.

Shortly after six the next morning Ytterberg called. The body they found wasn’t Håkan von Enke. A ring on a charred finger had led to the identification. Wallander felt relieved, and went back to sleep until nine. He was having his breakfast when Lennart Mattson called.

“It’s all over,” he said. “The Employee Administration Board has decided to dock you five days’ pay for forgetting your pistol.”

“Is that all?”

“Aren’t you pleased?”

“I’m more than pleased. So I assume I can come back to work. On Monday.”

And he did. Early Monday morning Wallander was at his desk once more.

But there was still no trace of Håkan von Enke.

9

The missing person remained missing. Wallander went back to work and was surrounded by smiling faces as his colleagues realized how mild his punishment had been. It was even suggested that they should start a collection to cover his fine, but nothing came of that. Wallander suspected that one or two of those welcoming him back with open arms were in fact concealing considerable schadenfreude, but he made up his mind to ignore that. He was not going to go around looking for potential hypocrites; he didn’t have the time. He would only sleep even worse at night if he lay in bed working himself up about colleagues sneering at him behind his back.

His first serious case was an assault that had taken place on a ferry between Ystad and Poland. It was an exceptionally brutal attack, and a classic situation: no reliable witnesses and everybody blaming everybody else. The assault had occurred in a cramped cabin; the victim was a young woman from Skurup who was making the unfortunate trip with her boyfriend, who she knew was prone to jealousy and couldn’t hold his liquor. During the crossing they had joined up with a group of young men from Malmö who had only one goal in mind: to drink themselves silly.

Wallander conducted the investigation on his own, with occasional help from Martinsson. He didn’t need much in the way of assistance; the perpetrator was no doubt among the men the young woman had met during the crossing — one or more of whom had beaten her up and almost ripped off her left ear.

There were no new developments in the Håkan von Enke case. Wallander spoke almost every day to Ytterberg, who still couldn’t believe that the commander had run away of his own accord. This belief was supported by the facts that von Enke had left his passport at home and that his credit card hadn’t been used. But the main thing was the man’s character, Ytterberg maintained. Håkan von Enke simply wasn’t the kind of man who disappeared. He would never abandon his wife. It didn’t add up.

Wallander spoke frequently to Louise. She was always the one who called, usually at about seven in the evening, when he was at home, eating a sloppily prepared dinner. Wallander could hear that she had reconciled herself to the thought that her husband was dead. In response to a direct question, she told him she was now getting a decent night’s sleep with the aid of sleeping pills. Everybody is waiting, Wallander thought as he replaced the receiver. He seems to be missing without a trace, gone up in the proverbial smoke and disappeared through the chimney of our existence. But is his body really lying hidden somewhere, rotting away? Or is he having dinner at this very moment? On a different planet, under another name, sitting opposite some celebrity we don’t know about?

What did Wallander think? His experience told him that the former submarine commander was dead. Wallander was afraid it would one day be revealed that his death was due to some banal cause, such as a mugging gone wrong. But he wasn’t sure. Perhaps there was still a small chance that von Enke had chosen to disappear, even if they couldn’t see why.

The one who dug in her heels deepest and refused to believe that von Enke had been killed was Linda. He’s not the kind of man anyone can kill, she insisted, indignantly, when she and Wallander met in their usual café while the baby slept soundly in her stroller. But not even Linda could guess why he would want to run away. Hans never called, but listening to Linda’s theories and questions, Wallander had the impression that the two of them were as one in their convictions. But he didn’t ask, didn’t want to interfere; it was their life, nobody else’s.

Steven Atkins started sending long e-mails to Wallander, page after page. The longer Atkins’s messages became, the shorter the replies Wallander managed to produce. He would have liked to write more, but his English was so shaky that he didn’t dare venture into complicated sentence structure. Nevertheless, he learned that Steven Atkins now lived close to the major naval base just outside San Diego in California, Point Loma. He owned a little house in an area populated almost exclusively by ex-servicemen. On the next block, Atkins claimed, there were “enough former sailors to man a submarine, more likely several, right down to the last position.” Wallander asked himself what it would be like to live in a neighborhood filled exclusively with former police officers. He shuddered at the thought.

Atkins wrote about his life, his family, his children and grandchildren, and he even attached pictures of them. Wallander had to ask Linda for help viewing them. They were sunlit photographs, with naval ships in the background, Atkins himself in uniform, and his large family smiling at Wallander. Atkins was bald and slim, and had his arm wrapped around the shoulders of his equally slim and smiling but not bald wife. Wallander thought the photo looked like an advertisement for dish soap, or some new breakfast cereal. Smiling and waving at him from the computer screen was the ideal, happy American family.

Wallander could see from his calendar that it was now exactly a month since Håkan von Enke had left his apartment in Grevgatan, closed the door behind him, and never returned. Wallander had just had a long phone conversation with Ytterberg. It was May 11, and rain was pouring down over Stockholm. Ytterberg sounded depressed — hard to tell if it was because of the weather or the state of the investigation. Wallander was wondering how he could pin down the right person to charge in connection with that sorry business on board the ferry. In other words, the conversation had been between two tired and distinctly grumpy police officers. Wallander wondered if Säpo was still showing an interest in the disappearance.

“A man by the name of William comes to see me now and again,” said Ytterberg. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know if that’s his first or last name. And I can’t say I’m all that interested. The last time he was here I had a sudden urge to throttle him. I asked if they had any information they could give me that might make things a bit easier for us. A helping hand from one professional to another, which you might think is a matter of common courtesy in a democratic country like Sweden. But needless to say, they didn’t. Or at least, that’s what William said. You can never know if people in his trade are telling the truth. Their whole way of operating is a sort of game based on lies and deception. Obviously, ordinary police officers like you and me occasionally pull the wool over people’s eyes, but it’s not what you’d call the cornerstone of our professional operations.”

After the call Wallander returned to the file of interrogation notes lying open on the desk in front of him. Next to the file was a photograph of a badly injured woman’s face. That’s why I do what I do, he told himself. Because her face looks like that, because somebody nearly beat her to death.

When Wallander came home that evening, he found that Jussi was ill. He was lying in his kennel, didn’t want to eat or drink. Wallander broke into a cold sweat and immediately called a veterinary surgeon he knew who had once helped him nail a man who had been attacking young horses grazing in their paddocks around Ystad. He lived in Kåseberga and promised to come. His examination suggested that Jussi had eaten something that disagreed with him, and that he would soon be well again. Jussi spent that night on a mat in front of the open fire, and Wallander kept checking to make sure he was all right. The next morning Jussi was back on his feet, albeit unsteadily.

Wallander was relieved. When he arrived at his office and switched on his computer, it occurred to him in passing that he hadn’t heard from Steven Atkins in five days. Perhaps there was nothing else to say, no more photographs to send. But shortly before noon, just as Wallander was starting to think about whether to go home for lunch or to eat somewhere in town, he had a call from reception. He had a visitor.

“Who is it?” Wallander asked. “What does he want?”

“He’s a foreigner,” said the receptionist. “He seems to be a police officer.”

Wallander went down to the front desk. He realized immediately who his visitor was. He wasn’t wearing a police uniform, but that of the U.S. Navy. It was Steven Atkins standing there with his cap under his arm.

“I didn’t mean to turn up without warning,” he said. “But I got the arrival time in Copenhagen wrong. I called you at home and on your cell phone and didn’t get a reply, so I came here.”

“This is a surprise,” said Wallander. “But you are most welcome, of course. Am I right in thinking that this is your first visit to Sweden?”

“Yes. My dear friend Håkan was always inviting me to come visit, but I never got around to it.”

They had lunch at the restaurant in town that Wallander considered to be the best. Atkins was a friendly man who took an interest in his surroundings. He asked questions that were genuine and not just polite, and he listened carefully to the answers. At first Wallander found it hard to imagine that Atkins had been in command of a submarine, especially one of the biggest nuclear-powered types in the U.S. Navy. He seemed much too jovial. But of course, Wallander had no idea what kind of person made a good submarine commander.

What motivated Atkins to travel to Sweden was purely and simply his concern about what had happened to his friend. Wallander was touched when he saw how worried Atkins was. An old man missing another old man — a friendship that was obviously very close.

Atkins had checked in to the Hilton at Kastrup Airport, then rented a car and driven to Ystad.

“I had to see what it was like, driving over that incredibly long bridge,” he said with a laugh.

Wallander was jealous of the man’s glistening white teeth. After the meal he called the police station and informed them that he wouldn’t be in for the rest of the day. Then they drove out to Wallander’s house. Atkins turned out to be very fond of dogs, and got on with Jussi like a house on fire. They went for a long walk with Jussi on his leash, following paths around the fields with occasional stops to admire the sea views and the undulating countryside. Atkins suddenly turned to face Wallander, and bit his lip.

“Is Håkan dead?”

Wallander understood his intention. Atkins had fired off his question so that Wallander wouldn’t be able to hide behind an evasive or not fully truthful response. He wanted a clear and definite answer. He was the submarine commander demanding to know whether a ship had been lost.

“We don’t know. He vanished without a trace.”

Atkins stared at him for quite a while, then nodded slowly. They resumed walking and were back at the house half an hour later. Wallander made coffee. They sat down at the kitchen table.

“You told me about the last phone conversation you and Håkan had,” said Wallander. “Why would anyone say he had reached a conclusion if the person he was talking to had no idea what he was talking about?”

“Sometimes people believe that others know what they’re thinking,” said Atkins. “Perhaps Håkan thought I knew what he meant.”

“You must have had a lot of conversations. Was there a theme that kept cropping up? Something more important than the rest?”

Wallander hadn’t prepared his questions. They simply tumbled out on their own, as if they were inevitable.

“We were roughly the same age,” said Atkins, “both children of the Cold War. I was twenty-three when the Russians launched their Sputnik. I remember I was scared to death, frightened they were going to aim it at us. Håkan told me once that he’d had similar thoughts, but more innocent, not so hair-raising. The Russians were there all right, but they weren’t quite the monsters for him that they were for me. We were affected by all kinds of things in those days. I remember Håkan was worried because Sweden wasn’t a member of NATO. He saw that as a catastrophic error of judgment. In his opinion, neutrality wasn’t only wrong and dangerous, but outright hypocrisy. We were on the same side. Sweden wasn’t in some sort of neutral no-man’s-land, no matter what the politicians maintained. When Wennerström was unmasked, Håkan called me — I can still remember it clearly. It was June 1963. I was second-in-command on a submarine that was about to be deployed in the Pacific Ocean. He wasn’t indignant at the fact that Wennerström was guilty of treason and had been spying for the Russians. He was exultant about that! At long last the Swedish people would realize what had been going on. The Russians had infiltrated the whole Swedish defense system. There were defectors wherever you looked, and when the day came for Russia to move in and occupy his country, the only thing that could save Sweden would be NATO membership. You asked if there was a theme that kept cropping up in our conversations. Yes, we always talked about politics. Including about how politicians reduced the possibility of maintaining the balance of power between us and the Russians. I can’t recall a single conversation we had that didn’t contain some kind of political discussion.”

“If your conversations were always dominated by politics,” Wallander wondered, “what could have been the conclusion he reached? Were there any previous occasions when he reached a conclusion that made him exultant?”

“Not as far as I can recall. But we’ve known each other for nearly fifty years. A lot of memories have faded away.”

“How did you meet?”

“In the way that all important meetings take place. By pure and peculiar coincidence.”

It had started raining when Atkins told the story of his first meeting with Håkan von Enke. He was a much better storyteller than the man Wallander had listened to in the windowless room in Djursholm during the birthday party. But perhaps it has to do with the language, Wallander thought. I’m used to thinking that stories in English are so much richer or more important than stories I hear in my own language.

“It was nearly fifty years ago,” said Atkins in his low voice. “August 1961, to be precise. In a place where you might least expect to find two young naval officers. I had flown to Europe with my father, who was a colonel in the U.S. Army. He wanted to show me Berlin, that little isolated fortress in the middle of the Russian Zone. We flew Pan Am from Hamburg, I recall; the plane was full of military servicemen — there were hardly any civilians on board, apart from some priests dressed in black. The situation was tense, but at least there were no lines of tanks from east and west, confronting each other like deer in heat. But one evening, not far from Friedrichstrasse, my father and I suddenly found ourselves in a crowd of people. Across from us a group of East German soldiers was busy setting up a barbed-wire fence that would eventually become a wall built of cinder blocks and cement. Standing next to me was a man of about my own age, dressed in a uniform. I asked where he was from, and he said he was Swedish. Of course it was Håkan. That was our first meeting. We stood there watching Berlin be divided by a wall — a world was amputated, you might say. Ulbricht, the East German leader, claimed that it was a measure ‘to protect freedom and lay the foundation of the socialist state that would continue to flourish.’ But that day, as the Berlin Wall began to be built, we saw an old woman standing on the other side, weeping. She was shabbily dressed and had a big scar on her face; she might have had some kind of false plastic ear, but neither of us was sure. But what we both saw, and would never forget, was that she stretched out a hand in a sort of helpless gesture toward those soldiers who were building a wall before her very eyes. That poor woman was not nailed to a cross, but she was reaching out toward us. I think that was the moment when we both realized what our duty was: to keep the free world free, and to make sure that no other countries ended up within prison-like walls. We became even more convinced a few weeks later when the Russians resumed nuclear weapons testing. By then I had returned to Groton, where I was stationed, and Håkan was on a train back to Sweden. But we had each other’s addresses in our pockets, and that was the beginning of a friendship that still continues. Håkan was twenty-eight at the time, and I had just celebrated my twenty-seventh birthday. Forty-seven years is a very long time.”

“Did he ever visit you in America?”

“Oh yes, often. He must have come over fifteen times, maybe more.”

The reply surprised Wallander. He had been under the impression that Håkan von Enke made only the occasional visit to the U.S.A. Wasn’t that what Linda said? Or did he misremember?

“That’s about one trip every three years,” said Wallander.

“He was a big fan of America.”

“Did he usually stay long?”

“Rarely less than three weeks. Louise was always with him. She and my wife got along well. We looked forward to their visits.”

“Perhaps you know that their son, Hans, works in Copenhagen?”

“I’ve arranged to meet him this evening.”

“I take it you know that he lives with my daughter?”

“Yes, I know. But I’ll have to meet her another time. Hans is very busy. We’re going to meet after ten this evening in my hotel. I’m flying to Stockholm tomorrow to see Louise.”

It had stopped raining. An airplane on its descent into Sturup flew low over the house, making the windows rattle.

“What do you think happened?” Wallander asked. “You knew him better than I did.”

“I don’t know,” said Atkins. “I don’t like saying that. I’m not the kind of person who avoids giving a straight answer. But I can’t believe he would leave of his own free will, abandoning his wife and son, and now even a grandchild, leaving them to fret and worry. I have to throw up my hands, even though I don’t want to.”

Atkins emptied his cup and stood. It was time for him to return to Copenhagen. Wallander explained the best way of getting to the main road into Ystad and then to Malmö. Just as Atkins was about to leave, he took a little stone out of his pocket and handed it to Wallander.

“A present,” he said. “An old Indian once told me about a tradition in his tribe; I think it was the Kiowa. If a person has a problem, he carries a stone — preferably a heavy one — in his clothes, and lugs it around until he has solved his difficulties. Then he can get rid of the stone and continue on his way through life more easily. Pop this stone in your pocket. Leave it there until we know what has happened to Håkan.”

It’s just an ordinary granite pebble, Wallander thought after he had waved good-bye to Atkins as he drove away down the hill. He also remembered the stone that had disappeared from the desk in the apartment in Grevgatan. He thought about what Atkins had said about his first meeting with Håkan von Enke. Wallander couldn’t remember anything about those days in August 1961. That was the year he celebrated his thirteenth birthday, and all he could recall was the battering he received from his hormones, which resulted in his life consisting of dreams — dreams about women, real or imagined.

Wallander belonged to the generation that grew up in the 1960s. But he had never been involved in any of the political movements, had never joined any of the protest rallies in Malmö, never really understood what the Vietnam war was all about or had any interest in freedom movements in countries he had barely heard of. Linda often reminded him how poorly informed he was. He usually dismissed politics as a higher authority that restricted the ability of the police to enforce law and order, and that was it. He generally voted in elections but was never sure about whom to vote for. His father had been a dyed-in-the-wool Social Democrat, and that was the party he usually supported. But rarely with any real conviction.

The meeting with Atkins had unsettled him. He searched for a Berlin Wall inside himself, but failed to find one. Was his life really so restricted that major events taking place in the outside world never had much effect on him? What aspects of life had upset him? Pictures of children who had been badly treated, of course — but he had never been sufficiently moved to do anything about it. His excuse was always that he was too busy with work. I sometimes manage to help people by making sure that criminals are removed from the streets, he thought. But aside from that? He gazed out over the fields where nothing was yet growing, but he failed to find what he was looking for.

That evening he straightened his desk, and dumped onto it all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle Linda had given him as a birthday present the previous year. It was a painting by Degas. He sorted the pieces methodically, and managed to complete the bottom left-hand corner of the puzzle.

The whole time, he continued to wonder what had happened to Håkan von Enke. But it was mainly his own fate he was thinking about.

He kept searching for the Berlin Wall that didn’t exist.

10

One afternoon in the beginning of June, Wallander drove to the marina in Ystad and walked to the bench farthest out on the jetty. It was one of his favorite retreats, a confessional without a priest, a place he often went when he wanted to be left alone to come to terms with something that was troubling him. It had been a cold spring, wet and windy, but now the first ridge of high pressure had drifted in over Skåne. Wallander took off his jacket, looked up at the sun, and closed his eyes. But he opened them again immediately. He was remembering the words of one of his father’s neighbors. You had a father who was very fond of you. He had often asked himself if that was true. The fact that he had become a police officer was something his father could never get over. But there must have been so much more to his life. Mona thought her father-in-law was awful and refused to accompany Wallander when he went to visit him. He and Linda ended up being the only ones in the car whenever he drove to Löderup. His father was always friendly toward his granddaughter. He displayed a degree of patience with Linda that neither Wallander nor his sister, Kristina, had experienced when they were young.

He was an elusive man, somebody you could never pin down, Wallander thought. Am I becoming like him?

A man about his own age was sitting on the rail of his little fishing boat, cleaning a net. He was concentrating, and humming to himself as he worked. As Wallander contemplated him, it occurred to him that he would love to change places — from the bench to the net, from the police station to a handsome boat made of varnished wood.

His father was an unsolved riddle as far as he was concerned. Was he himself just as much of a riddle to Linda? What would Wallander’s granddaughter say about her grandfather? Would he be no more than a shadowy and silent old police officer who sat alone in his house, visited less and less often by fewer and fewer people? That’s what I’m afraid of, Wallander thought. And I have every reason in the world to be afraid. I certainly haven’t cherished and taken good care of my friendships.

In many cases it was too late now. Some of the people who had been close to him were dead. Rydberg above all, but also his old friend the racehorse trainer Sven Widén. Wallander had never understood those who claimed you didn’t need to lose touch with people simply because they were dead, that you could keep on talking to them in their graves. He had never managed to do that. The dead were faces he barely remembered anymore, and their voices no longer spoke to him.

Reluctantly he stood up from the bench. He would have to go back to the police station. The investigation into the assault on the ferry was closed and a man had been found guilty, although Wallander was convinced that there had been two men involved in the attack. It was half a victory: one person was found guilty, one got justice, if that was possible after having your face smashed in. But another person had slipped through the net.

It was three in the afternoon by the time Wallander returned from his excursion to the bench on the jetty. There was a note on his desk saying Ytterberg had called and wanted to speak to him. Whoever had taken the call had noted that it was urgent. Everything was always urgent in Wallander’s life as a policeman. He had never received a non-urgent message. So he didn’t return the call right away, but first read a memo from the National Police Board that Lennart Mattson had asked him to comment on. It was about one of the reorganizations that were constantly being imposed on various local police forces. This time it was about setting up a system to ensure a bigger police presence in the streets on holidays and weekends, not only in the big cities but also in towns like Ystad. Wallander read through the document and was annoyed by the pompous and bureaucratic language in which it was couched. When he finished he was aware that he didn’t really understand what it had said. He wrote a few meaningless comments and put it all in an envelope that he would deposit in the chief’s in-box when he left for the day.

Then he called Ytterberg, who answered immediately.

“You called,” said Wallander.

“Now she’s disappeared too.”

“Who?”

“Louise. Louise von Enke. She’s vanished as well.”

Wallander held his breath. Were his ears deceiving him? He asked Ytterberg to repeat himself.

“Louise von Enke has disappeared.”

“What happened?”

Wallander could hear paper rustling. Ytterberg was searching through his notes. He wanted to give an exact report.

“These last few years the von Enkes have had a cleaning woman from Bulgaria. She has a residence permit. Her name’s the same as the capital, Sofia. She works for them on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, three hours in the morning. She was there on Monday and everything seemed to be as usual. When she left the apartment at about twelve o’clock on Monday, Louise said she was looking forward to seeing her again on Wednesday. When Sofia turned up at nine o’clock Wednesday, the apartment was deserted, but that was nothing out of the ordinary. Louise wasn’t always at home, and Sofia thought no more about it. But when she arrived this morning she realized something was wrong. She is certain that Louise has not been home since Wednesday. Everything was exactly as she left it. Louise has never before gone away for this long without giving advance warning. But there was no message, nothing, only the empty apartment. Sofia called the son in Copenhagen, who said he last spoke to his mother on Sunday — in other words, five days ago. So he called me next. Incidentally, do you know what line of business he’s in?”

“Money,” said Wallander. “He deals exclusively with money.”

“That sounds like a fascinating job,” said Ytterberg thoughtfully.

Then he returned to his notes.

“Hans gave me Sofia’s number and we worked our way through the apartment together. The Bulgarian lady knew exactly what was in all the cabinets and drawers. And she said what I least wanted to hear. I assume you know what I mean?”

“Yes,” said Wallander. “That nothing was missing.”

“Precisely. No suitcase, no clothes, no purses, not even her passport. That was still in the drawer where Sofia knew she kept it.”

“What about her cell phone?”

“That was charging in the kitchen. When I discovered that, I became really worried.”

Wallander thought it all over. He would never have thought that Håkan von Enke’s disappearance would be followed by another one.

“It’s worrying,” he said eventually. “Is there a plausible explanation?”

“Not as far as I can see. I called all her closest friends, but nobody has seen or heard from her since Sunday, when she called a friend named Katarina Lindén and asked about her experience at a mountain hotel in Norway where she’d stayed. According to Katarina Lindén, she sounded exactly the same as she always does. Nobody’s spoken to her since then. We’ll consult the team dealing with her husband’s disappearance. I just wanted to call you first. To get your reaction, to be honest.”

“My first thought is that she knows where Håkan is and went to join him. But of course the passport and the cell phone tend to argue against that.”

“I thought something similar myself. But I’m doubtful, just like you.”

“Could there be a plausible explanation despite everything? Could she be ill? Could she have collapsed in the street?”

“The hospitals were the first places I checked. According to what Sofia has told us, and we have no reason to doubt her, Louise always carried an ID in her jacket or overcoat. Since we haven’t found it in the apartment, there’s no reason to believe she didn’t have it with her when she went out, so the hospitals should be able to identify her.”

Wallander wondered why Louise hadn’t told him that she had a cleaning woman come in three times a week. Hans hadn’t mentioned her either. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. The von Enke family belonged to the upper class, and to them household help were taken for granted. You didn’t need to talk about them; they were simply there.

Ytterberg promised to keep him informed. They were just about to end their conversation when Wallander asked if Ytterberg had contacted Atkins, whom he had met in Stockholm.

“Does he have any useful information?” Ytterberg sounded doubtful.

Wallander thought it was odd that Ytterberg evidently didn’t know how close the two families were. Or had Atkins told him a different story?

“What time is it in California?” Ytterberg asked. “There’s not much point in waking people up in the middle of the night.”

“The difference between us and the east coast of the U.S.A. is six hours,” said Wallander, “but I don’t know about California. I can find out and give him a call.”

“Do that,” said Ytterberg. “Order the call and we’ll pay for it.”

“My official telephone hasn’t been blocked yet,” said Wallander. “I don’t think the police lose money on unpaid phone bills. Things haven’t gone quite that far yet.”

Wallander called directory assistance and was informed that the time difference was nine hours. That meant it was six in the morning in San Diego, so he decided to wait a couple of hours before calling Atkins. Instead he called Linda. She had already had a long conversation with Hans in Copenhagen.

“Come over,” she said. “I’m just sitting around, and Klara is asleep in her stroller.”

“Klara?”

Linda laughed lightly at his confusion.

“We decided last night. She’s going to be named Klara. She’s already named Klara.”

“Like my mother? Your grandma?”

“I never met her, as you know. Don’t get upset, but we chose it basically because it’s a nice name. And it goes well with both last names. Klara Wallander and Klara von Enke.”

“What will her full name be?”

“For now it will be Klara Wallander. She can make up her own mind eventually. Are you coming? You can have a cup of coffee and we can have a provisional baptism celebration.”

“Are you going to have her baptized? Properly?”

She didn’t answer that. And Wallander was sensible enough not to push the issue.

Fifteen minutes later he pulled up outside Linda’s house. The garden was aflame with color. Wallander thought about his own neglected garden, in which he planted almost nothing. When he lived in Mariagatan he had always envisioned an entirely different environment, with him crawling around on his hands and knees inhaling all the earthy smells, weeding the flower beds.

Klara was asleep in her stroller in the shade of a pear tree. Wallander observed her little face behind the mosquito net.

“Klara’s a pretty name,” he said. “What made you think of it?”

“We saw it in a newspaper. Someone named Klara behaved heroically in connection with a major fire in Östersund. We made up our minds more or less on the spot.”

They wandered around the garden talking about what had happened. The disappearance of Louise was as big a surprise for Linda and Hans as for everybody else. There had been no indications, nothing to suggest that Louise had been hatching a plan.

“Could it be another act of violence?” Wallander wondered. “If we assume that Håkan was attacked in some way?”

“You mean someone wanted to get rid of the pair of them?” Linda said. “But why? What could the motive possibly be?”

“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” said Wallander, contemplating a bush covered in flame-red roses. “Could they both have been involved in something the rest of us know nothing about?”

They continued their tour of the garden in silence. Linda was considering his question.

“We know so little about people,” she said in the end, when they had returned to the front of the house and she had checked on Klara behind the net.

Klara was fast asleep, her hands gripping a quilt.

“You could say that I know no more about that couple than this little girl does,” she said.

“Did you find Louise and Håkan mysterious?”

“Not at all. On the contrary! They were always frank and straightforward with me.”

“Some people can leave false tracks,” Wallander said thoughtfully. “Frankness and straightforwardness could be a sort of invisible lock protecting a reality they’d prefer not to reveal.”

They sat in the garden drinking coffee until Wallander checked his watch and saw that it was time for him to call Atkins. He went back to the police station and dialed the number from his office. After four rings Atkins answered with a grunt that sounded as if he were waiting to receive an order. Wallander told him what had happened. When he finished there was such a long silence that he began to wonder if they had been cut off. Then Atkins reacted in a loud voice.

“It’s not possible,” he said.

“Nevertheless, she’s been missing since Monday or Tuesday.”

Wallander could hear that Atkins was shocked. He was breathing heavily. Wallander asked when he had last spoken to her. There was a pause while Atkins thought it over.

“Friday afternoon. Her afternoon, my morning.”

“Who made the call?”

“She did.”

Wallander frowned. That was not the answer he had expected.

“What did she want?”

“She wanted to wish my wife a happy birthday. Both my wife and I were surprised. Neither of us bothers about birthdays.”

“Could there have been some other reason why she called?”

“We had the impression that she was feeling lonely, and wanted to talk to somebody. That’s not so difficult to understand.”

“If you think carefully, looking back, was there anything she said that could be tied to her disappearance?”

Wallander didn’t trust his bad English, but Atkins understood what he meant. There was a pause before he answered.

“Nothing,” he said eventually. “She sounded exactly the same as always.”

“But there must be something going on,” said Wallander. “First he disappears, and then she does.”

“It’s sort of like the poem about the ten little Indians,” said Atkins. “They disappear one after the other. Half the family has vanished now. There’s only the two children left.”

Wallander gave a start. Had he heard wrong?

“But there’s only one who could disappear,” he said tentatively. “You’re not including Linda, surely?”

“We shouldn’t forget the sister,” said Atkins.

“Sister? Does Hans have a sister?”

“Oh yes. She’s named Signe. I don’t know if I’m pronouncing it correctly. I can spell it if you like. She didn’t live with her parents. I don’t know why. You shouldn’t dig into other people’s lives unnecessarily. I’ve never met her. But Håkan told me he had a daughter.”

Wallander was too astonished to ask any more questions, and they hung up. He stood by the window and contemplated the water tower. There was a sister named Signe. Why had nobody said anything about her?

That evening Wallander sat at his kitchen table and worked through all his notes from the day Håkan von Enke had disappeared. But nowhere did he discover any hint at all of a daughter in the family. There was no mention of a Signe. It was as if she had never existed.