The Dogs of Riga

CHAPTER 15

The border was invisible.

It was there nevertheless, inside him, like a coil of barbed wire, just under his breast-bone. Kurt Wallander was scared. He would look back on the final steps he took on Lithuanian soil to the Latvian border as a crippling trek towards a country from where he would find himself shouting Dante's words: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here! Nobody returns from here – at least, no Swedish police officer will get out alive.

The night sky was filled with stars. Preuss had been with him from the moment he had made contact on board the Trelleborg ferry, and he didn't seem unmoved by what was in store. Through the darkness Wallander could hear that his breathing was fast and irregular.

"We must wait," Preuss whispered in his barely comprehensible German. "Warten, warten"

At first, Wallander had been furious at being supplied with a guide who didn't speak a word of English. He wondered what Joseph Lippman had been thinking of, assuming that a Swedish police officer, barely able to string together a few words of English, would be a German speaker. Wallander had come very close to calling the whole thing, which now appeared to be the triumph of wild fantasy over his own common sense, off. It seemed to him that the Latvians had been living in exile for too long and had lost all touch with reality. Twisted by grief, over-optimistic or just plain mad. How could this man Preuss, this skinny little man with the scarred face, inspire Wallander with sufficient courage, and not least provide sufficient security, to enable him to return to Latvia as an invisible, nonexistent person? What did he actually know about Preuss, who had simply appeared in the ferry cafeteria? That he might be a Latvian citizen living in exile, that he might be earning his living as a coin dealer in the German city of Kiel – but what else? Absolutely nothing.

Nevertheless, something had made him keep going, and Preuss had sat beside him in the passenger seat, dozing all the time, while Wallander sped on following the directions Preuss gave him by pointing at a road atlas. They travelled eastwards through the former East Germany and by 5 p.m. were five kilometres short of the Polish border, where Wallander backed his car into a rickety barn next to a decaying farmhouse. The man who met them was yet another exiled Latvian, but he spoke good English. He promised that the car would be kept completely safe until Wallander returned. They waited until nightfall, then stumbled through a dense spruce forest until they reached the border, and crossed the first invisible line on the route to Riga. In a little town whose name Wallander quickly forgot, they were met by Janick, a man with a heavy cold, who picked them up in an old, rusty lorry. A bumpy, jerky ride over the Polish steppe ensued. Wallander caught the driver's cold, and longed for a decent meal and a bath, but all he was offered were cold pork chops and camp beds in freezing houses out in the Polish hinterland. Progress was slow. Generally they travelled at night or just before dawn. The rest of the time was passed in sleep or in uncomfortable silence. He tried to understand why Preuss was being so cautious. What had they to fear, as long as they were in

Poland? He was given no explanation. Preuss understood little of what Wallander was saying, and Janick hummed an English pop song from the war years, when he wasn't sniffing and snivelling and spreading germs in Wallander's direction. When they finally got to the Lithuanian border Wallander had started to hate "We'll meet again". He could just as easily have been somewhere in the heart of Russia as in Poland. Or Czechoslovakia, or Bulgaria. He had completely lost all sense of where Sweden was in relation to where they were. The lunacy of the whole undertaking became more obvious with every kilometre that the lorry took him deeper into the unknown. They travelled through Lithuania on a series of buses, none of which had any springs, and now, four whole days after Preuss had first contacted him on the ferry, they were close to the Latvian border, in the middle of a forest smelling strongly of resin.

" Warten? Preuss kept repeating, and Wallander sat down obediently on a tree stump and waited. He was cold, and felt sick.

I'll have pneumonia by the time I get to Riga, he thought desperately. Of all the stupid things I've done in my life, this is the stupidest, and it deserves no respect, nothing more than a loud guffaw of scorn. Here, on a tree stump in a Lithuanian forest, sits a Swedish police officer in early middle age, one who has completely lost his sense of judgement and gone out of his mind.

But there was no going back. Clearly he would never be able to retrace his steps without help. He was totally dependent on the confounded Preuss, who the idiot Lippman had allocated to him as a guide, and there was no alternative but to keep going, further and further away from the dictates of reason, until they came to Riga.

On the ferry, just as the Swedish coastline disappeared from view, Preuss had introduced himself as Wallander was having coffee in the cafeteria. They had gone out on deck in the biting wind. Preuss had with him a letter from Lippman, and to his astonishment Wallander found himself assuming yet another new identity. This time he wasn't to be "Mr Eckers", but Herr Hegel, Herr Gottfried Hegel, a German sales representative for a sheet music and fine art book publisher. He was amazed when, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Preuss handed over a German passport with Wallander's photograph duly glued in place and stamped. He recognised it as a photograph Linda had taken of him several years earlier – how Lippman had got hold of it was a mystery. He was now Herr Hegel, and eventually realised from Preuss's stubborn talk and gesticulating that he should hand over his Swedish passport for the time being. Wallander gave him the document, knowing he was mad to do so.

It was now four days since he had been confronted by his new identity. Preuss had scrambled onto an uprooted tree, and Wallander could just see his face through the darkness. The man seemed to be peering into the east. It was a few minutes past midnight. Suddenly Preuss raised his hand and pointed eagerly to the east. They had hung a paraffin lamp on a branch so that Wallander wouldn't lose contact with Preuss. He stood up and squinted in the direction Preuss was pointing. He made out a faint, blinking light as if a cyclist with a faulty dynamo was coming towards them.

"Gehen!" he whispered. "Schnell, nun. Gehen!"

Twigs and branches poked and scratched at Wallander's face. I'm crossing the final border, he thought, but I have barbed wire in my stomach.

They came to a boundary line cut through the forest like a street. Preuss held Wallander back briefly while he listened attentively, then he dragged him across the empty space and into the cover of the dense forest on the other side. After about 10 minutes they came upon a muddy cart track and found a car waiting. Wallander could see the glow from a cigarette inside. Somebody got out and came towards him with a hooded torch. All of a sudden, he realised Inese was standing before him.

It would be a long time before he forgot the surge of joy and relief at seeing her, at encountering something familiar after all the unknown. She smiled at him in the faint light from the torch, but he couldn't think of anything to say. Preuss stretched out his skinny hand in farewell, then was swallowed up by the forest before Wallander even had time to say goodbye.

"It's a long way to Riga," Inese said. "We must get going."

Occasionally they left the road so that Inese could have a rest, and they also had a puncture in one of the tyres, which Wallander had managed to change with enormous effort. He had suggested he might do some of the driving, but she had merely shaken her head, without giving any explanation.

He realised straight away that something had happened. There was something hardened and determined about Inese that couldn't simply be put down to exhaustion. He sat beside her in silence, unsure whether she'd have the strength to answer questions. He had been told that Baiba Liepa was expecting him, and that Upitis was still in prison, that his confession had been reported in the newspapers.

"My name's Gottfried Hegel this time," he said when they'd been under way for two hours and had stopped to fill up with petrol from a spare can he'd got from the back seat.

"I know," Inese answered. "It's not a very attractive name."

"Tell me why I'm here, Inese. How am I to help you?"

She didn't answer. Instead, she asked him if he was hungry and passed him a bottle of beer and two meat sandwiches in a paper bag. Then they continued their journey. At one point he dozed off, but shook himself awake, worried that she might fall asleep at the wheel.

They reached the outskirts of Riga shortly before dawn. It was 21 March, his sister's birthday. In an attempt to embellish his new identity, he decided that Gottfried Hegel had a large number of brothers and sisters, and that his youngest sister was called Kristina. He could see Mrs Hegel in his mind's eye, a rather masculine woman with the beginnings of a moustache, and their house in Schwabingen built of red brick with a well-kept but characterless back garden. The story Lippman had supplied as background to the passport had been sketchy in the extreme. Wallander reckoned it would take an experienced interrogator no more than a minute to demolish Gottfried Hegel, and expose the passport as fake.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"We're nearly there," she replied.

"How can I be at all useful if nobody tells me anything?" he asked. "What are you keeping from me? What's happened?"

"I'm tired," she said, "but we're pleased you've come back. Baiba is happy. She'll burst into tears when she sees you."

"Why won't you answer my questions? Something's happened, I can see you're scared to death. What is it?"

"Everything has become much more difficult these last two weeks, but it's better if Baiba tells you herself. Anyway, there's a lot I don't know either."

They were driving through the endless suburbs. The silhouettes of factories were vaguely visible against the yellow, street-lamp sky. The deserted streets were shrouded in fog, and it occurred to Wallander that this was how he'd imagined the countries of Eastern Europe, countries that called themselves socialist and declared themselves to be paradise on earth.

Inese stopped outside an oblong warehouse, switched off the engine, and pointed to a low, iron door at one gable end.

"Go there," she said. "Knock, and they'll let you in. I must go."

"Will I see you again?"

"I don't know. That's up to Baiba."

"Aren't you forgetting you're my girlfriend?"

She smiled fleetingly before answering. "I might have been Mr Eckers's girlfriend," she said, "but I'm not sure I'm as fond of Herr Hegel. I'm a good girl and I don't run off with just any man."

Wallander got out and she drove off immediately. Just for a moment he considered trying to find a bus stop and travelling into the city centre, where he'd be able to look for a Swedish Consulate or Embassy and get help to return home. He didn't dare to imagine how a Swedish diplomat would react to the story the Swedish police officer would have to tell. He could only hope that handling acute mental derangement was one of the skills a diplomat possessed. But it was too late for that. He would have to go through with what he'd embarked on.

He marched over the crunchy gravel and knocked on the iron door. A bearded man Wallander had never seen before opened it. He was cross-eyed, but gave him a friendly nod, peered over Wallander's shoulder to make sure he hadn't been followed, then ushered him quickly in and closed the door.

Wallander found himself in a warehouse full of toys. Wherever he looked were wooden shelves piled high with dolls. It was as if he'd descended to an underground catacomb with dolls' faces grinning at him like evil skulls. It was like a dream. Maybe he was in bed at his Mariagatan flat in Ystad and nothing that surrounded him was real? All he needed to do was to breathe steadily and wait until he woke up. But there was no welcome awakening to look forward to. Three more men emerged from the shadows, followed by a woman. Wallander recognised the driver who had sat in silence in the shadows when he had spoken to Upitis.

"Mr Wallander," the man who had opened the door for him said, "we're so pleased you've come to assist us."

"I've come because Baiba Liepa asked me to," Wallander answered. "Not for any other reason. She's the one I want to meet."

"That's not possible just now," said the woman, in faultless English. "Baiba is being watched constantly, but we think we know how we can get you to her."

Wallander sat down on a rickety wooden chair, and was handed a cup of tea. He had difficulty making out the men's faces in the dim light. The cross-eyed man, who seemed to be the leader of the welcoming committee, squatted down in front of Wallander.

"We are in a very difficult position," he said. "We're all under constant observation because the police know there is a risk that Major Liepa has hidden away some documents that could threaten their existence."

"So Baiba hasn't found the papers?"

"Not yet."

"Has she any idea at all of where he might have hidden them?"

"No. But she believes you will be able to help her."

"How will I be able to do that?"

"You are on our side, Mr Wallander. You're a police officer and used to solving riddles."

They're mad, Wallander thought indignantly. They're living in a dream world, and I'm the last straw they have to clutch at. All at once he could understand what oppression and fear did to people. They put their hope in some unknown saviour who would spring from nowhere and redeem them.

Major Liepa had not been like that. He trusted no one but himself and his close friends and confidants. For him the alpha and omega of all the injustices forced upon the Latvian nation was reality. He was religious, but had refrained from allowing his religious ideals to be obscured by a god. Now the major was gone, and they no longer had a central point from which to orientate themselves: Kurt Wallander, the Swedish police officer, would have to enter the arena and shoulder the fallen mande.

"I must see Baiba Liepa as soon as possible," he insisted. "That's the only thing that really matters."

"That will happen during the course of today," the crosseyed man said.

Wallander felt exhausted. What he would most like to do would be to have a bath and then climb into bed and sleep. He didn't trust his own judgement when he was overtired, and he was afraid that he would make a mistake that would have fatal consequences.

The cross-eyed man was still squatting at his feet. Wallander noticed he had a revolver tucked inside his trousers.

"What will happen when Major Liepa's papers are found?" he asked.

"We shall have to find ways of publishing them," the man replied, "but the main thing is that you should get them out of the country and publish them in Sweden. That will be a revolutionary event, a historic occasion. The world will realise what has been going on in this stricken land of ours."

Wallander felt an overwhelming need to protest, to guide these confused people back to the path beaten by Major Liepa, but his weary brain was unable to conjure up the English word "saviour", and all he could manage to think was how incredible it was that he was here in Riga, in a toy warehouse, and that he didn't have the slightest idea what he was going to do next.

Then everything happened very fast. The warehouse door was flung open, Wallander got up from his chair and he saw Inese running between rows of shelves, screaming. He had no idea what was happening, but then came a violent explosion and he threw himself headlong behind some shelves crammed with dolls' heads.

The building was flooded with searchlights and there was a series of loud bangs, but it was only when he saw the cross-eyed man had taken out his revolver and fired that he realised the place was being subjected to intensive gunfire. He crawled further back behind the shelving, but came up against a wall. The noise was unbearable. He heard a scream and when he turned to look he saw that Inese had fallen over the chair he had just been sitting on. Her face was covered with blood and it seemed she had been shot straight through the eye. She was dead. At that very moment the cross-eyed man raised an arm to his head: he'd been hit, but Wallander couldn't tell whether he was alive. He knew he must escape, but he was trapped in a corner and now the first of the men in uniform came racing up, machine guns in hand. Without hesitating, he knocked over a rack of Russian dolls which rained down on him, and he lay down on the floor, allowing himself to be immersed in a flood of toys. All the time he was thinking he would be discovered at any moment and shot – his false passport wouldn't help him. Inese was dead, the warehouse had been surrounded, and the mad, daydreaming people inside had no chance to resist.

The gunfire ceased as abruptly as it had started. The silence was deafening, and he tried not to breathe. He could hear voices, soldiers or police officers talking to one another, and then he recognised one of them: there was no doubt at all, it was Sergeant Zids. He could just see the uniformed men through his covering of dolls. All the major's friends appeared to be dead and were being carried out on grey canvas stretchers. Then Sergeant Zids emerged from the shadows and ordered his men to search the warehouse. Wallander closed his eyes, thinking it would soon be over. He wondered if Linda would ever know what had happened to her father, who disappeared while holidaying in the Alps, or whether his disappearance would become a mystery in the annals of the Swedish police force.

But nobody came to kick the dolls away from his face. The echoing jackboots slowly faded away, the sergeant's irritated voice ceased to urge on his men, and only silence and the acrid stench of spent ammunition were left behind. Wallander had no idea how long he lay there, motionless. Eventually the cold of the concrete floor made him shiver so much that the dolls started rattling. He sat up carefully. One of his feet had gone to sleep, or frozen stiff, he wasn't sure which. The floor was spattered with blood, there were bullet holes everywhere, and he forced himself to take a series of deep breaths so as not to start vomiting.

They know I'm here, he thought. It was me Sergeant Zids ordered his soldiers to look for. Or maybe they thought I hadn't arrived yet? Perhaps they thought they had moved in too soon?

He forced himself to think, even though he couldn't get the image of Inese out of his mind. He would have to get out of this house of death, he would have to accept the fact that he was on his own now. There was only one thing to do: find the Swedish Embassy. His heart was pounding violently, and he feared he was suffering a heart attack that he would never recover from. Tears streamed down his face as he thought of Inese lying dead. Looking back, he could never work out how long it took for him to regain his self-control and start to think rationally again.

The iron door was locked. He assumed the whole warehouse was under observation. He would never be able to get away in daylight. Behind one of the overturned racks was a window, almost completely obscured by dust. He picked his way over to it through the broken and shattered toys, and looked out. Two jeeps were parked, facing the warehouse. Four soldiers were keeping watch on the building, their weapons at the ready. Wallander stepped back from the window and explored the building. He was thirsty – there must be water somewhere. While he was looking, his mind was working overtime. He was a hunted man, and the hunters had introduced themselves with shattering brutality. There was no question of establishing contact with Baiba Liepa. He might as well arrange his own execution. The two colonels, or at least one of them, would stop at nothing in order to prevent the major's discoveries from being published. Shy, modest Inese had been gunned down in cold blood, like vermin. Perhaps it had been friendly Sergeant Zids who had fired the shot that had passed straight through her eye.

His fear was now coupled with violent hatred. If he had a weapon in his hand, he would not have hesitated to use it. For the first time in his life he was prepared to kill another human being, without even trying to excuse it as self-defence.

There's a time to live, and a time to die, he thought. That was the mantra he had repeated to himself when he'd been stabbed by a drunk in Pildamm Park in Malmö. Now it had acquired extra meaning.

He came upon a dirty lavatory with a dripping tap. He rinsed his face and quenched his thirst, then found a part of the warehouse that was cut off from the rest, unscrewed the light bulb, and sat down in the dark to wait for the darkness that would have to come eventually.

To keep his fear under control, he tried to concentrate on working out a plan of escape. Somehow or other he must reach the city centre and find the Swedish Embassy. He would have to reckon on every single police officer, every single "Black Beret", knowing what he looked like and having orders to watch out for him. Without help from the Swedish Embassy, he would be lost. He reckoned that remaining undetected for more than a very short time was out of the question. He must also assume the Swedish Embassy would be under observation.

The colonels must suppose that I already know the major's secret, he thought, or they wouldn't have reacted as they have done. I say the colonels, because I still don't know which of them it is behind everything that has happened.

He dozed off for a few hours, only to wake up with a start when he heard a car drawing up outside the warehouse. Occasionally, he went back to the dirty window. The soldiers were still there, on the alert. Wallander felt sick the whole of that never-ending day. He couldn't get over the evil of it all. He forced himself to his feet and searched the whole building, looking for a way out. The main door was out of the question. Eventually, he found a grill in a wall close to the ground, covering a hole that may once have contained some kind of ventilator. He pressed his ear to the cold brick wall to discover whether he could hear any sign of soldiers on this side of the building as well, but he could hear nothing. What he would do if he did eventually get out of the warehouse, he had no idea. He tried to rest as much as he could, but was unable to sleep. Inese's crumpled body, her blood-covered face, wouldn't go away. Dusk fell, and with it a sharper cold.

Shortly before 7 p.m. he decided he would have to leave. With great care, he started to ease off the rusty grill. At any moment he expected a searchlight to be switched on, excited voices to shout out commands, and a hail of bullets to smash into the wall. Eventually he managed to detach the grill, slide it carefully to one side and scramble through. There was a faint yellow light from an adjacent factory illuminating the wasteland outside the warehouse, and he tried to get his eyes used to the near-darkness. There was no sign of the soldiers. About ten metres away was a row of rusting lorries, and he decided to start by trying to get as far as that without being noticed. He took a deep breath, crouched down, and ran as fast as he could to the old wrecks. As he came to the first of them, he stumbled over an old tyre and hit his knee against a broken bumper. The pain was excruciating, and he thought the noise would immediately attract the attention of the soldiers on the other side of the warehouse. But he lay still and nothing happened. The pain in his knee was unbearable, and he could feel blood running down his leg.

What next? He thought of the Swedish Embassy, but then he realised he neither could nor wanted to give up. He had to contact Baiba Liepa, and it was no good sending up a private distress signal. Now that he had escaped the warehouse where Inese and the cross-eyed man had met their deaths, he had enough strength to think differently. He had come here for Baiba Liepa, and she was the person he should try to find, even if it was the last thing he did in this life.

He crept through the shadows, following a fence around the factory and eventually coming to the street. He still didn't know where he was, but he could hear the muffled drone that sounded like a motorway in the distance, and he headed for the noise. He occasionally passed other people, and he sent a silent "thank you" to Joseph Lippman who had been far-sighted enough to insist that Wallander should put on the clothes Preuss had brought with him in a shabby suitcase. He walked for over half an hour, cowering in the shadows to avoid police cars, and all the while trying to work out what to do. He had to accept that there was only one person he could turn to. It would involve a major risk, but he had no choice. It also meant he would have to spend another night in hiding. It was chilly, and he would have to find something to eat if he were going to survive the night.

He realised that he would never have the strength to walk all the way to the centre of Riga. His knee was hurting badly, and he was so tired he couldn't think straight.

He would have to steal a car. The very thought of the risks involved horrified him, but it was his only chance. He had noticed a Lada parked in a street he had just passed – it hadn't been standing outside a house, but seemed strangely deserted. He retraced his steps. He tried to recall how to open locked car doors and short-circuit engines. But what did he know about a Lada? Maybe it wasn't possible to start one of those using the methods perfected by Swedish car thieves.

The car was grey and its bumpers were dented. Wallander stood in the shadows, observing the car and the surroundings. All he could see were factories with all the lights out. He went over to a broken-down fence round a loading bay in the ruins of what had once been a factory. His fingers were frozen stiff, but he managed to break off a length of wire about two feet long. He made a loop at one end, then hastened over to the car.

Sliding the wire in through the car window and manipulating the door handle was easier than he had expected. He scrambled into the driver's seat and hunted for the ignition lock and the cables. He cursed the fact that he didn't have any matches. Sweat was pouring down the inside of his shirt, but he was so cold that he was shivering. Eventually, out of sheer desperation, he ripped the whole bundle of wires out from behind the ignition, pulled the lock away, and connected up the loose ends. The car was in gear, and leapt forward when the ignition produced a spark. He heaved the gear lever into neutral, then connected the loose ends again. The engine started, he fumbled for the handbrake without finding it, pressed all the buttons in sight on the dashboard in an attempt to find the lights, then engaged first gear.

This is a nightmare, he thought. I'm a Swedish police officer, not a madman with a German passport stealing cars in the Latvian capital of Riga. He drove in the direction he'd been heading on foot, working out which gear was which, wondering why there was such a stench of fish in the car.

After a short while he reached the motorway he'd heard the noise from previously. The engine almost stopped as he turned onto it, but he managed to keep it going. He could see the lights of Riga. He had already made up his mind to try to find his way to the district around the Latvia Hotel and go to one of the little restaurants he'd seen there. Once again he sent a silent "thank you" to Joseph Lippman, who had made sure Preuss provided him with some Latvian currency. He had no idea how much money he had, but hoped it would be enough for a meal. He crossed the river and turned left onto the riverside boulevard. There was not a lot of traffic, and he got stuck behind a tram and was immediately subjected to some furious tooting from a taxi just behind him that had been forced to brake suddenly. He was getting nervous, crashing the gears, and only managed to get away from the tramlines by turning into a side street. He discovered too late that he had driven into a one-way street. A bus was coming towards him, the street was very narrow, and no matter how hard he tried and fiddled with the gear lever, he couldn't find reverse. He was on the brink of abandoning the car in the middle of the street and running away when he finally managed to engage reverse gear and back out of the way. He turned into one of the streets near the Latvia Hotel and parked in a legal parking spot. He was soaked in sweat, and knew that he ran the risk of pneumonia if he couldn't soon have a hot bath and change his clothes.

A church clock tolled 8.45 p.m. He crossed the street and went into a smoke-filled cafe. He was lucky, and found an empty table. The men deep in conversation over their beer glasses didn't seem to notice him, there was no sign of anybody in uniform, and he was now able to assume the role of Gottfried Hegel, travelling salesman. Once when he and Preuss had stopped for a meal in Germany, he had noticed that the German for menu was Speisekarte so that was what he asked for. Unfortunately, it was all in incomprehensible Latvian, and so he just pointed to one of the dishes. He was served with a plate of beef stew, and ordered a glass of beer to help wash it down. For a short while, his mind was completely blank.

He felt better when he'd eaten. He ordered coffee, and felt his mind working again. He realised how he should spend the night. All he needed to do was to take advantage of what he had discovered about this country – that is, that everything has its price. While he was here before he had noticed that just behind the Latvia Hotel were several guesthouses and scruffy hotels. He would go to one of them, brandish his German passport, then put a few Swedish hundred-krona notes on the desk, thus buying some peace and quiet and avoiding unnecessary questions. There was a risk that the police had instructed every hotel in Riga to look out for him, but that was a risk he would just have to take. His German identity should get him through one night at least. With a bit of luck he might manage to find a receptionist whose first instinct wasn't to go running off to the police.

He drank his coffee and thought about the two colonels. And Sergeant Zids, who might have been personally responsible for murdering Inese. Somewhere out there in this awful darkness was Baiba Liepa, and she was waiting for him. "Baiba Liepa will be very pleased." Those were just about the last words Inese had spoken in her short life.

He looked at the clock over the bar counter. Nearly 10.30 p.m. He paid his bill, and calculated that he had more than enough money to pay for a hotel room. He left the cafe and stopped outside the Hermes Hotel not far away. The outside door was open, and he tramped up a creaking staircase to the upper floor. A curtain was drawn aside, and he found an old, hunch-backed woman peering at him from behind thick glasses. He smiled the friendliest smile he could conjure up, said "Zimmer? and put his passport on the desk. The old woman nodded, said something in Latvian, and gave him a card to fill in. As she hadn't even bothered to look at his passport, he made up his mind on the spot to change his plans and signed himself in under an invented name. He was so flustered that the only name he could think of was Preuss. He gave himself the first name Martin, claimed he was 37 years old, from Hamburg. The woman gave him a friendly smile, handed over the key, and pointed to a corridor behind his back. Unless the colonels are so desperate to find me that they organise raids on every single hotel in Riga tonight, I'll be able to spend a quiet night here, Wallander thought. Needless to say, they will eventually realise that Martin Preuss is in fact Kurt Wallander, but by then I should be miles away. He unlocked his door, was delighted to find there was a bathroom, and could hardly believe his luck when the water gradually became warm. He undressed, and slumped into the bath. The heat seeping into his body made him feel drowsy, and he nodded off.

When he woke, the water was stone cold. He got out of the bath, dried himself and went to bed. A tram clattered by in the street. He stared into the darkness, and felt his fear returning. He must stick to his plan. If he lost control over his own judgement, the dogs on his trail would soon catch his scent. Then he would be sunk. He knew what he had to do. He would look for the only person in Riga who might possibly be able to put him in touch with Baiba Liepa. He had no idea what her name was, but he did remember that she had red lips.