The Troubled Man

‘His overcoat?’

‘Yes.’

‘But there must be thousands of overcoats that look like his?’

‘Not Hakan’s overcoat. It’s a thin, dark blue coat sort of like a sailor’s raincoat. I can’t describe it any better than that. But that’s what I saw.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘Just imagine! A concert with Madonna, two old friends, dinner, a summer night, no squealing baby, no boyfriend - and suddenly I catch sight of Hakan. I sat there transfixed for about fifteen seconds, then I hurried after him. But it was too late. There was no sign of him. There were people everywhere, side streets, taxis, restaurants. I walked all the way along Stroget as far as the city hall at Radhuspladsen, and then back again. But I couldn’t find him.’

Wallander emptied his glass of water. Even if what he’d just heard sounded implausible, he knew that Linda was sharp-eyed and was rarely wrong when it came to identifying people.

‘Let’s take a step back,’ he said. ‘If I understood you correctly he’d already passed by the bench where you were sitting before you noticed him. But you said you caught a glimpse of his face. So he must have turned round?’

‘Yes, he looked over his shoulder.’

‘Why would he do that?’

She frowned.

‘How would I know?’

‘It’s a simple question. Did he expect to find somebody following him? Was he worried? Did he do it automatically, or had he heard something?’

‘I think he was checking to make sure he wasn’t being followed.’

‘You think?’

‘I can’t know for sure. But yes, I think he was checking to make sure there wasn’t somebody behind him.’

‘Did he seem scared? Worried?’

‘I can’t answer that.’

Wallander considered her answer. He still had questions.

‘Could he have seen you?’

‘No.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘If he had, he’d have looked at the bench. But he didn’t.’

‘Have you told Hans?’

‘Yes. He was upset and said that I must have been imagining things.’

‘Will you make sure that he hasn’t been meeting his father in secret?’

She nodded, without speaking.

The sun disappeared behind a cloud, and there was a rumble of thunder in the distance. They went inside. Wallander wanted Linda to stay for a meal, but she said she needed to go home. She was just about to leave when the clouds opened, and it started pouring. The parking area in front of the house was transformed into a mudbath. Wallander decided that before the week was out he would order several loads of gravel so that nobody would need to wade through the mud whenever it rained.

‘I’m positive,’ she said. ‘It was Hakan. Very much alive in Copenhagen.’

‘So we know one thing,’ Wallander said. ‘Hakan hasn’t suffered the same fate as his wife. He’s alive. That changes everything.’

Linda nodded. They both knew they could no longer rule out the possibility that Hakan had killed his wife. But they shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Maybe there was some other reason he had gone into hiding. Was he on the run from something or somebody?

They stood there in silence, each of them lost in thought. The rain died away as quickly as it had started.

‘What was he doing in Copenhagen?’ Wallander asked. ‘For me there’s only one plausible answer to that question.’

‘To meet Hans. That’s what you’re thinking. Maybe to solve money problems? But I’m convinced that Hans isn’t lying to me.’

‘I believe you. But there’s no reason to think they’ve had contact already. That might happen tomorrow.’

‘In that case he’ll tell me.’

‘Maybe,’ said Wallander thoughtfully.

‘Why shouldn’t he?’

‘Loyalty. What if his father says he can’t breathe a word to anybody, not even to you, about their meeting? And that he gives Hans a reason that he dare not question?’

‘I’ll notice if he’s hiding something from me.’

‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned,’ said Wallander, testing the wet and soggy ground with one foot, ‘it’s that you should never believe you know all that much about other people’s thoughts and ideas.’

‘So what should I do?’

‘Say nothing for the moment. Ask nothing. I have to think about what this implies. So do you. But I’ll talk to Ytterberg.’

He accompanied her to the car. She held on to his arm so as not to slip.

‘You should do something about this parking area,’ she said. ‘Have you thought about spreading some gravel around?’

‘It had occurred to me,’ said Wallander.

She had already got into her car when she began talking about Baiba again.

‘Is it really that bad? That she’s going to die?’

‘Yes.’

‘When did she leave?’

‘Early this morning.’

‘Will you see her again?’

‘She came here to say goodbye. She has cancer and will die before long. I think you can work out how that feels without any help from me.’

‘It must have been awful.’

Wallander turned away and walked round the corner of the house. He didn’t want to burst out crying - not because he didn’t want to display weakness in front of his daughter, but for his own sake. He simply didn’t want to think about his own death, which was basically the only thing that frightened him. He remained there until he heard her start the car and drive away. She had realised that he wanted to be left alone.

When he went back into the kitchen, he sat in the chair opposite where he usually sat at mealtimes.

He thought about what Linda had said about Hakan von Enke. They were back to square one.

28

Wallander clambered up the rickety ladder leading to the attic. A musty smell of damp and mould hit him hard. He was aware that one of these days he would have to have the whole roof removed and replaced. But not yet. Maybe in a year or, with a bit of luck, two.

He knew roughly where he had put the cardboard box he was looking for, but another one caught his eye first. In a box supplied by the moving company in Helsingborg was his collection of LPs. During all the years he had lived in Mariagatan, he had a record player on which he could listen to them, but it had finally broken, and he hadn’t been able to find anybody to repair it. It had been taken away with the rest of the rubbish when he moved, but he had kept the records and stored them in the attic. He sat down and thumbed through his old albums. Every sleeve contained a memory, sometimes clear and comprehensive, just as often a flickering image of faces, smells, emotions. In his late teens he had been an almost fanatical fan of the Spotnicks. He had their first four records, and he recognised the title of every song. The music and the electric guitars echoed inside him. Also in the box was a record featuring Mahalia Jackson, which he had once been astonished to receive as a present from one of the silk knights who bought his father’s paintings. The man probably spent his life peddling paintings and gramophone records. Wallander remembered carrying a canvas to the man’s car and being given the record in return. The gospel songs had made a big impression on him. Go down, Moses, he thought, and he could see in his mind’s eye his first record player, with the speaker in the lid making a rasping sound.

He suddenly found himself sitting there with an Edith Piaf record in his hands. The album cover, in black and white, was a close-up of her face. Mona, who hated the Spotnicks, had given him that LP - she preferred other Swedish groups such as Streaplers and Sven-Ingvars, but her great favourite was the French chanteuse. Neither she nor Wallander understood a word of what Piaf sang, but her voice fascinated them both.

After Piaf came a record featuring the jazz musician John Coltrane; where had he got that one? He couldn’t remember. When he took it out of the sleeve he saw that it had barely been played. He tried hard, but the record didn’t speak to him. He couldn’t hear a single note from Coltrane’s saxophone.

Right at the back of the box were two opera LPs: La Traviata and Rigoletto. Unlike the Coltrane, these records were almost worn out.

He remained there, sitting on the attic floor, wondering if he should take the box downstairs and buy a new record player so that he could listen to them. But in the end he slid the box to one side. The music he listened to nowadays was on cassette or CD. He didn’t need those scratchy vinyl LPs any more. They belonged to the past, and they could stay there in the darkness of the attic.

He found the box he was looking for and brought it down to the kitchen. He took out of it a large number of Lego pieces, and spread them out over the table. He had given the Lego to Linda when she was a little girl - he’d won them in a raffle.

He’d got the idea from Rydberg. They’d been sitting at his kitchen table late one evening in spring, not long before Rydberg died. Ystad and the surrounding area had been subjected to a series of robberies by a masked man with a sawn-off shotgun. In order to organise the incidents and in the hope of finding a pattern, Rydberg had produced a pack of cards and used it to trace the robber’s movements. The unknown villain had been the jack of spades. It had taught Wallander a way of seeing how a criminal went about his business, possibly even how he thought. When he had tried out the Rydberg method himself a few years later, he used Lego pieces instead of playing cards. But he had never told Rydberg.

He arranged figures to represent Hakan and Louise, various dates, places and events. A fireman in a red helmet was Hakan; Louise was a little girl Linda had called Cinderella. He placed a group of marching Lego soldiers on one side; they were the unanswered questions he now considered the most important. Who was pretending to be Signe’s uncle? Why had her father emerged from the shadows? Where had he been and why had he hidden himself away?

He remembered that he needed to call Niklasgarden. He did so and was informed that nobody had been to visit Signe. Neither her father nor some unknown uncle.

He sat there at the kitchen table with a piece of Lego in his hand. Somebody isn’t telling the truth, he thought. Of all the people I’ve spoken to about Hakan and Louise von Enke, there’s one who’s not being straight with me. He or she is either lying or distorting the truth by holding back information. Who? And why?

*

The phone rang. He took it out into the garden. It was Linda. She came straight to the point.

‘I talked to Hans. He felt like I was pressuring him. He got annoyed and stormed out. When he comes back, I’ll apologise.’

‘That’s something Mona never did.’

‘What? Storm out or apologise?’

‘She often stormed out. That was always the last card she played whenever we had an argument. A slammed door. When she came back she never apologised.’

Linda laughed. She’s on edge, Wallander thought. They probably argue a lot more often than she wants me to know.

‘According to Mona it was the other way round,’ she said. ‘It was you who slammed the door, you who never apologised.’

‘I thought we’d already agreed that Mona sometimes says things that aren’t true,’ Wallander said.

‘You do exactly the same. Neither of my parents is a thoroughly honest person.’

Wallander reacted angrily.

‘Are you? Thoroughly honest?’

‘No. But I’ve never claimed to be.’

‘Get to the point!’

‘Am I interrupting something?’

Wallander decided on the spur of the moment, not without a certain amount of pleasure, to tell a lie.

‘I’m cooking.’

She saw through him right away.

‘In the garden? I can hear birds singing.’

‘I’m having a barbecue.’

‘You hate barbecues.’

‘You don’t know everything I hate and don’t hate. What is it you want to tell me?’

‘Hans has had no contact with his father. Nor have there been any transactions in the family bank accounts apart from the withdrawals made by Louise before she disappeared. Hans is dealing with all the post now. No money has been taken out at the bank, nor in any other way.’

Wallander suddenly realised that this was more important than he’d first thought.

‘So what has Hakan been living on while he’s been hidden away? He turns up in Copenhagen, but obviously he doesn’t need any money because he doesn’t contact his son, nor does he make any withdrawals. That seems to suggest that somebody is helping him. Or could he have bank accounts that Hans doesn’t know about?’

‘That’s possible. Hans has lots of contacts in the banking world; he’s looked into it and hasn’t found anything. But there are lots of ways of hiding money.’

Wallander said nothing. He didn’t have any more questions. But he was now beginning to wonder seriously if Hakan von Enke’s not needing money might be a significant clue. Klara started crying.

‘I have to go now,’ Linda said.

‘I can hear that. So you believe we can rule out any secret contacts between Hans and his father, yes?’

‘Yes.’

She hung up. Wallander put down the phone and moved over to the garden hammock. He rocked back and forth, with one foot on the ground. In his mind’s eye he could see Hakan von Enke walking along Stroget. He was walking fast, stopping now and then to turn round before continuing on his way. And then he disappeared, possibly down a side street, or into the mass of people on Stroget.

Wallander woke up with a start. It had begun raining, and drops were falling on his bare foot that was resting on the ground. He stood up and went inside. He closed the door behind him, but then he paused. He could sense some sort of connection, still very vague, but nevertheless something that could shed light on where Hakan von Enke had been since he disappeared. An escape hatch, Wallander thought. When he vanished, he knew what he was going to do. He fled from his walk along Valhallavagen to a place where nobody would be able to find him. Wallander now felt quite sure that Louise had not been prepared for her husband’s disappearance; her worry had been genuine. No proof had come to light, no facts, only this feeling that he found persuasive.

Wallander went to the kitchen. The stone floor felt cold under his bare feet. He was moving slowly, as if he was afraid that the thoughts might disappear. The Lego pieces were on the table. He sat down. An escape hatch, he thought again. Everything planned, well organised - a submarine commander knows how to arrange his environment down to the last detail. Wallander tried to envisage the escape hatch. He had the feeling that he knew where Hakan von Enke was hiding. He had been close by, without noticing.

He leaned over the table and arranged a line of Lego. Everybody who had ever had anything to do with Hakan and Louise. Sten Nordlander; their daughter, Signe; Hans; Steven Atkins in his house near San Diego. But also the others who had been more peripheral. He arranged them in a line, one after the other, and thought about who could have helped von Enke, who might have been able to supply everything needed, including money.

This is what I’m looking for, Wallander thought. An escape hatch. The question is, is Ytterberg thinking along the same lines, or is he playing with different pieces of Lego? He picked up his mobile phone and dialled the number. It was raining harder now, pelting against the tin-plate windowsills. Ytterberg answered. It was a bad connection. Ytterberg was outside, in the street.

‘I’m at an outdoor cafe,’ Ytterberg said. ‘I’m just about to pay. Can I call you back?’

He did so twenty minutes later when he had returned to his office in Bergsgatan.

‘I’m the type that thinks it’s easy to get back to work again after a holiday,’ Ytterberg said in response to Wallander’s question about how he felt, after being off.

‘I can’t say I share that view,’ said Wallander. ‘Going back to work means being faced with a desk overloaded with files passed on by others who have left cheerful little Post-it notes about how pleased they are to be going on holiday.’

He started by reporting on his meeting with Hermann Eber. Ytterberg listened carefully and had several questions. Then Wallander told him about Hakan von Enke’s return. He passed on what Linda had told him; he was even more convinced now that she really saw him.

‘Could your daughter have been mistaken?’

‘No. But I understand why you ask. It’s astonishing.’

‘So there’s no doubt at all that it was him?’

‘No. I know my daughter. If she says it was him, it was him. Not a doppelganger, not somebody who looked like him - it was Hakan von Enke.’

‘What does your future son-in-law have to say?’

‘That his father hadn’t gone to Copenhagen in order to visit him. There’s no reason not to believe him.’

‘But is it really plausible to think that he wouldn’t make contact with his son?’

‘Whether it’s plausible or not I can’t say. But I don’t think Hans is stupid enough to try to mislead Linda.’

‘Mislead his partner, or mislead your daughter?’

‘The mother of his child. If that makes a difference.’

They talked for a while about what von Enke’s reappearance could imply. As far as Ytterberg was concerned, it meant above all else that he would have to reconsider what role Hakan von Enke might have played in the death of his wife.

‘I don’t know what you’ve been thinking,’ said Ytterberg, ‘but I always assumed that he was dead as well. Ever since his wife’s body was discovered on Varmdo, at least.’

‘I’ve had my doubts,’ said Wallander. ‘But if I’d been in charge of the investigation I’d probably have thought the same thing.’

Wallander told him briefly, but nevertheless in detail, his thoughts about von Enke’s escape hatch.

‘Those secret documents we found in Louise’s handbag made me think,’ Ytterberg said. ‘Since von Enke was in hiding, it was reasonable to think that he was involved as well, that they were working together.’

‘As spies?’

‘Well, it wouldn’t be the first time in Sweden that a man and his wife had been caught spying. Even if only one of them was directly involved.’

‘I assume you’re referring to Stig Bergling and his wife?’

‘Are there any others?’

It occurred to Wallander that Ytterberg occasionally assumed an arrogant tone of voice that Wallander would never have tolerated under normal circumstances. If somebody in the police station in Ystad had asked him ironic questions like that he would have been furious. But he let it pass - Ytterberg was probably not always aware of how he sounded.

‘Do you know anything about what was on the microfilms? Defence secrets, armaments, foreign policy?’

‘I have no idea. But I get the impression that our Sapo colleagues are worried. They’re insisting that we hand over every single document linked to this investigation, not that there are very many. I’ve been summoned to a meeting later today with a Commander Holm, who is evidently a bigwig in the military intelligence service.’

‘I’d be interested to hear what questions he asks you.’

‘That’s always a good way of finding out what people know already. In other words, you want to know what questions he doesn’t ask?’

‘Exactly.’

‘I promise to let you know.’

The next morning after breakfast he checked all the burners carefully before going out for a walk with Jussi, who ran off like a shot into the lifting mist.

He felt clearer in the head than he had in a very long time. Nothing seemed excessively difficult, and his zest for life was strong. He suddenly started running, challenging the lethargy that had filled him for the last few months. He kept running until he was thoroughly out of breath. The sun was warming things up now. He took off his sweaty shirt, made a face when he saw his protruding belly, and decided, as he had so often before, to start dieting.

On the way back to the house his mobile phone started ringing. Somebody was speaking in a foreign language, a woman, but her voice was very faint, almost completely drowned out by a veritable storm of crackling and noise. After three or four seconds the line went dead. Wallander thought it could have been Baiba. He thought he recognised her voice, despite the background noise. But whoever it was didn’t call back, so he went home and sat out in the garden with a cup of coffee.

It was going to be a lovely summer’s day. He decided to go for a picnic, all on his own. He had always thought one of the best things in life was settling down among the sand dunes and having a nap in the sunshine after eating the meal he’d brought with him from home. He started packing a basket, which was a souvenir from his childhood home. His mother used to use it for keeping balls of wool, knitting needles and half-finished sweaters. Now he filled it with sandwiches, a Thermos, two apples and a few copies of the Swedish Policeman that he hadn’t got round to reading. It was eleven o’clock when he once again checked the burners before locking the door. He drove out to Sandhammaren and found a place among the dunes and stunted trees. When he had finished eating and reading the magazines, he wrapped himself in a blanket and was soon fast asleep.

He woke up feeling cold. The sun had gone behind a cloud, the air was chilly and he had cast off the blanket. He rolled himself up inside it again, and folded his jacket to serve as a pillow. The sun soon re-emerged, and he remembered a dream he had had many years ago, a recurring dream that always vanished just as quickly as it had appeared. He was involved in some erotic game with a faceless black woman. He had never had a relationship with a dark-skinned woman, apart from an incident during a visit to the West Indies when he had drunk himself silly one evening and taken a prostitute back to his hotel room. Nor had he particularly lusted after any such relationship. But then that black woman had turned up in his dreams, only to vanish again after a few months.

A storm was brewing on the horizon. He packed everything into the basket and went back to the car. When he came to Kaseberga he drove down to the harbour and bought some smoked fish. He had just got back home when his mobile phone started ringing again. It was the same woman as before, but this time the reception was much better and he could hear right away that it wasn’t Baiba. The woman was speaking broken English.

‘Kurt Wallander?’

‘Speaking.’

‘My name is Lilja. You know who I am?’

‘No.’

The woman suddenly burst out crying. She screamed into his ear. He was scared stiff.

‘Baiba,’ she yelled. ‘Baiba.’

‘What about her? I know her.’

‘She dead.’

Wallander was standing with the bag of fish from Kaseberga in his hand. He dropped it.

‘She’s dead? She was here only a couple of days ago!’

‘I know. She was my friend. But now she dead.’

Wallander could feel his heart pounding. He sat down on the stool just inside the front door. He eventually managed to piece together the confused and anguished message that Lilja was trying to convey. Baiba had been only a few miles outside Riga when she drove off the road at high speed and crashed into a stone wall, wrecking the car and killing herself. She had died on the spot; that was something Lilja repeated over and over again, as if it might prevent Wallander from sinking into a bottomless pit of sorrow. But it was in vain, of course. The despair welling up inside him was something he had never experienced before.

They were suddenly cut off, without warning, before Wallander could get Lilja’s phone number. He waited for her to call him again, still sitting on the stool in the hall. Only when it became clear that she was unable to get through did he move into the kitchen. He left the bag with the smoked fish lying on the floor. He had no idea what to do next. He lit a candle and placed it on the table. She must have been driving non-stop, he thought. From the ferry when it docked in Poland, through Poland, through Lithuania, and then almost all the way to Riga. Had she fallen asleep at the wheel? Or had she driven into the wall on purpose, intending to kill herself? Wallander knew that fatal car accidents involving nobody but the driver were often suicides. A former secretary who used to work in the Ystad police station, a divorcee with a drinking problem, had chosen that way out only a few years ago. But he didn’t think Baiba would do anything like that. Somebody who decides to travel around to say goodbye to her friends and lovers would hardly be likely to set up a car crash to bring her life to a close. She must have been tired and lost control; that was the only explanation he could think of.

He picked up his mobile phone to call Linda - he didn’t feel capable of coping with what had happened on his own. There were times when he needed to have other people on hand. He dialled the number, but then hung up when her phone started ringing. It was too soon; he didn’t have anything to say to her. He threw his phone onto the sofa and went out to Jussi, let him out of his kennel, sat down on the ground and started stroking him. The phone rang. He rushed indoors. It was Lilja. She was calmer now. He asked her questions and got a clearer picture of what had happened. There was also something else he wanted to ask about.

‘Why are you calling me? How did you know that I exist?’

‘Baiba asked me to.’

‘Asked you to do what?’

‘To call you when she was dead. But I didn’t think it would be quickly like this. Baiba thought she would live until Christmas.’

‘She told me she hoped to live until the autumn.’

‘She said different things to different people. I think she wanted us to have the same uncertainty that she had.’

Lilja explained who she was, an old friend and colleague who had known Baiba since they were teenagers.

‘I knew about you,’ she said. ‘One day Baiba rings and she says: “Now he is here in Riga, my Swedish friend. I take him to the cafe in Hotel Latvia this afternoon. Go there and you will see him.” I went there, and I saw you.’

‘Perhaps Baiba mentioned your name. I think so. But we never met, is that right?’

‘Never. But I saw you. Baiba always thought much of you. She loved you.’

She burst out crying again. Wallander waited. Thunder was rumbling in the distance. He could hear her coughing, and blowing her nose.

‘What happens now?’ he asked when she picked up the phone again.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Who are her closest relations?’

‘Her mother, and brothers and sisters.’

‘If her mother is still alive she must be very old. I don’t remember Baiba ever talking about her.’

‘She is ninety-five years. But she is clear in the head. She knows her daughter is dead. They had hard relations since Baiba was child.’

‘I want to know when the funeral will take place,’ Wallander said.

‘I promise to call you.’

‘What did she say about me?’ Wallander asked in the end.

‘Not much.’

‘But she must have said something?’

‘Yes. But not much. We were friends, but Baiba never allowed anybody very close.’

‘I know,’ he said.

When the call was over, he lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling where a patch of damp had appeared a couple of months ago. He lay there for quite a while before returning to the kitchen table.

Shortly after eight he called Linda and told her what had happened. He found it very difficult, and could feel a sense of mounting desperation.

29

On 14 July, at eleven o’clock in the morning, Baiba Liepa’s funeral took place at a chapel in central Riga. Wallander had arrived the previous day on a flight from Copenhagen. When he disembarked he recognised the airport immediately, even though the terminal had been rebuilt. The Soviet military planes that had been visible all over the place at the beginning of the 1990s were no longer there, and from the windows of the taxi taking him into Riga he noted that there had been a lot of changes. The hoardings were different; the facades had been newly painted; the pavements had been repaired. But pigs were still rooting around in dunghills next to tumbledown farmhouses, and in the centre of town the old buildings were still standing. The main difference was the large number of people in the streets, their clothes, and the cars lining up at red lights and at turn-offs to centrally located car parks.

Warm rain was falling over Riga the day Wallander returned. Lilja, whose surname was Blooms, had called and given him the details of Baiba’s funeral. His only question had been whether his presence might somehow be regarded as inappropriate.

‘Why should it be?’

‘Perhaps there are circumstances within the family that I don’t know about?’

‘Everybody knows who you are,’ said Lilja Blooms. ‘Baiba told about you. You were never a secret.’

‘The question is what she said.’

‘Why are you so worried? I thought you and Baiba were in love? I thought you would be married. We all thought that.’

‘She didn’t want to.’

He could tell that what he’d said surprised her.

‘We thought it was you who backed out. She said nothing. It was long before we understood it was over. But she never wanted to talk about it.’

It was Linda who had persuaded him to go to the funeral. When he called her she had jumped into her car and come over. She was so upset that she had tears in her eyes when she walked through his front door. That helped him to mourn Baiba openly. He sat there for a long time, reminiscing to his daughter about the time he and Baiba had spent together.

‘Baiba’s husband, Karlis Liepa, had been murdered,’ he said. ‘It was a political murder. Tensions between the Russians and the Latvians were running high in those days. That was why I went to Riga, to assist in the murder investigation. Needless to say, I had no idea about the political chasms that opened up the country. Looking back, that could well be the moment when I began to understand what the world looked like during the Cold War. It was seventeen years ago.’

‘I remember you going,’ said Linda. ‘I was in my last year of school at the time, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do with myself. Although deep down I think I realised that I wanted to become a police officer.’

‘I seem to recall that you talked about all kinds of possibilities, but never that one.’

‘That should have made you suspicious. I can’t believe you had no idea what I was thinking!’

‘Nor did I have any idea about Baiba when Karlis Liepa came to the police station in Ystad.’

Wallander remembered the details very clearly. Apart from his chain-smoking, which aroused vehement protests from all the non-smokers, Karlis Liepa had been a calm, reserved man, and Wallander had got along well with him. One evening, during a heavy snowstorm, he had taken Liepa back to his apartment in Mariagatan. He had produced a bottle of whisky, and to his delight had discovered that Liepa was almost as interested in opera as he was himself. They had listened to a recording of Turandot with Maria Callas as the snow whirled about in the strong winds blowing through the deserted streets of Ystad.

But where was that record now? It hadn’t been among those he had found in the attic the previous day. The question was solved when Linda told him she had it at home.

‘You gave it to me in the days when I was dreaming of becoming an actress,’ she said. ‘I thought of putting on a one-woman show depicting the tragic fate of Maria Callas. Can you imagine? If there’s anything I’m totally different from, it’s a Greek opera singer.’

‘With bad nerves,’ Wallander added.

‘What was Baiba? A teacher?’

‘When I met her she was translating technical literature from English. I think she did a bit of practically everything.’

‘You must go to her funeral. For your own sake.’

It wasn’t all that straightforward, but she convinced him in the end. She also made sure that he bought a new dark suit, accompanied him to a tailor’s in Malmo, and when he expressed his astonishment at the price she explained that it was a high-quality suit that would last him for the rest of his life.

‘You’ll be attending fewer weddings,’ Linda said. ‘But at your age, the number of funerals increases.’

He muttered something inaudible and paid. Linda didn’t press him to repeat whatever it was he had said.

He clambered out of the taxi and carried his little suitcase into the reception area at the Hotel Latvia. He noted right away that the cafe where Lilja Blooms had seen him and Baiba together was no longer there. He checked in and was given room 1516. When he got out of the lift and stood in front of the door, he had the feeling that this was the very room he’d stayed in the first time he went to Riga. He was quite sure that the figures 5 and 6 had been part of the room number then as well. He unlocked the door and went in. It didn’t look at all like what he remembered. But the view from the window was the same, a beautiful church whose name he had forgotten. He unpacked his bag and hung up his new suit. The thought that it was in this hotel, and possibly even in this very room, that he first met Baiba filled him with almost unbearable pain.

He went to the bathroom and rinsed his face. It was only twelve thirty. He had no plans, but thought he might take a walk. He wanted to mourn Baiba by remembering her as she was when he met her for the first time.

A thought suddenly struck him, a thought he had never dared to confront before. Had his love for Baiba been stronger than the love he had once felt for Mona? Despite the fact that Mona was Linda’s mother? He didn’t know, and would never be sure.

He went out and strolled through the town, had a meal in a restaurant even though he wasn’t especially hungry. That evening he sat in one of the hotel bars. A girl in her twenties came up and asked him if he wanted company. He didn’t even answer, merely shook his head. Shortly before the hotel restaurant closed, he had another meal, a spaghetti dish that he hardly touched. He drank red wine, and felt tipsy when he stood up to leave the table.

It had been raining while he ate, but it was clear now. He retrieved his jacket and went out into the damp summer evening. He found his way to the Freedom Monument, where he and Baiba had once had their photograph taken. A few youths on skateboards were practising their skills on the flagstones in front. He continued his walk, and didn’t arrive back at the hotel until very late. He fell asleep on top of the bed without taking off anything but his shoes.

The next morning he put on his funeral suit and went down to the dining room for breakfast, despite the fact that he wasn’t hungry.

He had bought two half-bottles of vodka at Kastrup Airport. He had one of them in his inside pocket. As the lift conveyed him down to the dining room, he unscrewed the top and took a swig.

When Lilja Blooms came in through the glass doors, Wallander was already in the reception area, waiting for her. She went over to him right away. Baiba must have shown her pictures of him, he thought.

Lilja was short and plump, and her hair was cropped. She didn’t look anything like what he had imagined. He thought she would look more like Baiba. When they shook hands, Wallander felt embarrassed, without knowing why.

‘The chapel isn’t far from here,’ she said. ‘It’s only a ten-minute walk. I have time for a cigarette. You can wait here.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Wallander.

They stood in the sun outside the hotel, Lilja wearing sunglasses and holding a cigarette in her hand.

‘She was drunk,’ she said.

It was a moment before Wallander realised what she was referring to.

‘Baiba?’

‘She was drunk when she died. The autopsy made that clear. She had a lot of alcohol in her blood when she crashed her car.’

‘I find that hard to believe.’

‘So do I. All her friends are astonished. But then, what do we know about the thoughts of a person who is going to die?’

‘Are you saying that she committed suicide? That she crashed the car on purpose? Drove into that stone wall?’

‘There’s no point in worrying about it - we’ll never know for certain. But there were no skid marks on the road. A motorist behind her said that she wasn’t driving unusually fast, but that the car was wobbling all over the road.’

Wallander tried to picture the last moments of Baiba’s life. He couldn’t be sure about what had happened, whether it was an accident or suicide. But another thought struck him. Could Louise von Enke’s death also have been an accident, and not murder or suicide after all?

He never followed that thought through because Lilja stubbed out her cigarette and announced that it was time to set off. Wallander excused himself, paid a visit to the men’s room in reception, and took another swig of the vodka. He examined himself in the mirror. What he saw was a man on his way into old age, worried about what was in store for him in life.

They came to the chapel. The darkness inside was all the more intense because the sunshine had been so bright. It was some time before Wallander’s eyes adjusted.

When they did, he had the feeling that Baiba Liepa’s funeral was a sort of rehearsal for his own. It scared him, and almost made him stand up and leave. He should never have gone to Riga; he had nothing to do there.

But he remained seated nevertheless, and thanks mainly to the vodka, he didn’t even start crying, not even when he saw how upset Lilja Blooms was by his side. The coffin was like a desert island, washed up in the sea - the last resting place for a person he had once been in love with, Wallander thought.

For some unknown reason, he suddenly saw Hakan von Enke in his mind’s eye. He felt annoyed, and he brushed aside the thought.

He was beginning to feel drunk. It was as if the funeral had nothing to do with him. When it ended, and Lilja Blooms hastened over to express her condolences to Baiba’s mother, Wallander took the opportunity to slip out of the chapel. He didn’t give a backward glance, but went straight to the hotel and asked the receptionist to help him change his flight. He had planned to stay until the next day, but now he wanted to leave as soon as possible. There were seats available on an afternoon flight to Copenhagen. He packed his suitcase, kept his funeral suit on, and left the hotel in a taxi, afraid that Lilja Blooms might come looking for him. He sat outside the terminal building for nearly three hours before it was time for him to pass through security.

He continued drinking on the plane. When he came to Ystad, he took a taxi home and almost fell out of the car. As usual, Jussi was being looked after by the neighbours, and he decided to leave him there until the next day.

He collapsed into bed and slept soundly. When he woke up shortly before nine the next morning, he regretted having fled from the chapel without even having said goodbye to Lilja. He would have to call her soon and try to make a plausible excuse. But what on earth would he say?

Although he had slept well, Wallander felt ill. He couldn’t find any aspirin, despite searching through the bathroom and all the drawers in the kitchen. Since he couldn’t face driving to Ystad, he asked his neighbour if she had any. She did, and he dissolved one in a glass of water and drank it in her kitchen. She gave him a few extra to take home with him.

When he got back, he put Jussi in his kennel. The light on the answering machine was blinking when he entered the house. Sten Nordlander had called again. Wallander got his mobile phone and called him. He could hear the wind howling around Nordlander when he answered.

‘I’ll call you back,’ he said. ‘I have to find a spot sheltered from the wind.’

‘I’m at home.’

‘Give me ten minutes. Are you OK?’

‘Yes, I’m fine.’

Wallander sat down at the kitchen table to wait. Jussi wandered around his kennel, sniffing to see if he had been visited by any mice or birds. He occasionally glanced at the kitchen window. Wallander raised his hand and waved to him, but Jussi didn’t react; he couldn’t see anything, but he knew that Wallander was in the house somewhere. Wallander opened the window. Jussi immediately started wagging his tail and stood up on his hind legs, resting his front paws on the bars.

The phone rang. It was Sten Nordlander. He had found a sheltered spot; there was no sound of any wind.

‘I’m on a little island, not much more than a bare rock, not far from Moja,’ he said. ‘Do you know where that is?’

‘No.’

‘At the outer edge of the Stockholm archipelago. It’s very beautiful.’

‘I’m glad you called,’ said Wallander. ‘Something has happened. I should have contacted you. Hakan has turned up.’

Wallander summarised what had happened.

‘Amazing!’ said Nordlander. ‘I thought about him when I stepped ashore here on the skerry.’

‘Any particular reason?’

‘He liked islands. He once told me about an ambition he’d had when he was young: he wanted to visit every island in the world.’

‘Did he ever try to achieve it?’

‘I don’t think so. Louise wasn’t keen on sea voyages.’

‘Did that cause any problems?’

‘Not that I know of. He was very fond of her, and she of him. But dreams can be of value even if you don’t have an opportunity to turn them into reality.’

The connection was poor; the skerry was at the very limit of the coverage area. They agreed that he would call Wallander again once he was back on the mainland.

Wallander slowly put the phone down on the table and sat motionless. He suddenly had the feeling that he knew where Hakan von Enke was. Sten Nordlander had shown him the direction he should be following.

He couldn’t be sure, and he had no proof. Nevertheless, he knew.

He thought about a book he’d seen in Signe von Enke’s bookcase, along with the books about Babar. The Sleeping Beauty. I’ve been lost in a deep sleep, Wallander thought. I should have realised long ago where he was. I’ve only just woken up.

Jussi started barking. Wallander went out and gave him some food.

The following day, early in the morning, he got into his car. The farmer’s wife looked surprised when he turned up with Jussi yet again.

She asked how long he was going to be away. He told her the truth.

He didn’t know. He had absolutely no idea.

30

The boat he hired was an open plastic craft, barely eighteen feet long, with an Evinrude outboard motor, seven horsepower. The proprietor had also lent him a sea chart. He had chosen that particular boat because it was not so big that it would be difficult to row, which he suspected he would need to do. When he signed the contract he produced his police ID. The man gave a start.

‘Everything’s fine,’ Wallander said. ‘But I need a spare can of diesel. I might be able to return the boat tomorrow, but then again, I might need it for a few more days. Anyway, you have my credit card number. You know you’ll be paid.’

‘A police officer,’ said the man. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘No, it’s just that I’m going to surprise a good friend on his fiftieth birthday.’

Wallander hadn’t prepared his lie in advance. But he was used to inventing excuses, and they came automatically now.

The boat was jammed between two big motor cruisers, one of them a Storo. There was no electric ignition, but it started the moment Wallander pulled the cord. The boat owner, who spoke with a Finnish accent, guaranteed that the engine was reliable.

‘I use it myself when I go fishing,’ he said. ‘The problem is, there are hardly any fish. But I go fishing even so.’

It was four o’clock in the afternoon. Wallander had arrived at Valdemarsvik an hour earlier. He’d eaten at what appeared to be the only restaurant in the village, then found his way to the boat-hire establishment just a couple of hundred yards away, on one side of the long inlet known as Valdemarsviken. Wallander had packed a backpack containing, among other things, two torches and some food. He’d also taken warm clothes, despite the fact that it was a warm afternoon.

On the way up to Ostergotland he had driven through several downpours of rain. One of them, just outside Ronneby, was so heavy that he’d been forced to pull into a lay-by and wait until it passed. As he listened to the pattering on the car roof and watched the water cascading down his windscreen, he began to wonder if he really had judged the situation correctly. Had his instinct let him down, or - as it had so often before - would it turn out to be right after all?

He stayed in the lay-by, lost in thought, for almost half an hour before the rain stopped. He set off again and eventually came to Valdemarsvik. It was clear now, and there was hardly any wind. The water in the inlet was ruffled only occasionally by a light breeze.

There was a smell of mud. He remembered it from the last time he was here.

Wallander started the outboard motor and set out. The man who had rented him the boat stood for some time, watching him, before returning to his office. Wallander decided to leave the long inlet before darkness fell. Then he would moor somewhere and enjoy the summer twilight. He had tried to work out the current phase of the moon, without success. He could have called Linda, but since he didn’t want to reveal where he was going or why he was making this trip, he didn’t. Once he had left the inlet he would call Martinsson instead. If he decided to call anyone, that is. The task he had set himself wasn’t dependent on whether the night was dark or moonlit, but he wanted to know exactly what was in store for him.

When he glimpsed the open sea between the islands ahead of him, he let the engine turn over while he studied the sea chart in its plastic cover. Once he had established precisely where he was, he selected a place not too far from his final destination where he could moor and wait for dusk to fall. But it was already occupied by several boats. He continued and eventually found a small island, not much more than a rock with a few trees, where he could row to the beach, having first detached the outboard motor. He put on his jacket, leaned against one of the trees and took a drink of coffee from his Thermos. Then he called Martinsson. Once again it was a child who answered, possibly the same one as last time. Martinsson took the phone from her.

‘You’re a lucky man,’ he said. ‘My little granddaughter has become your secretary.’

‘The moon,’ said Wallander.

‘What about it?’

‘You’re asking too quickly. I haven’t finished yet.’

‘I’m sorry. But I can’t take my eyes off the grandchildren; they need watching all the time.’

‘I understand that, and I wouldn’t disturb you unless it was necessary. Do you have a calendar? What phase is the moon in right now?’

‘The moon? Is that what you’re asking about? Are you out on some sort of astronomical adventure?’

‘I could be. But can you answer my question?’

‘Hang on a minute.’

Martinsson put down the receiver. It was obvious from Wallander’s voice that he wasn’t going to get any sort of explanation.

‘It’s a new moon,’ he said when he returned to the phone. ‘A thin little crescent. Assuming you’re still in Sweden and not some other part of the world.’

‘I’m still in Sweden. Thank you for your help,’ said Wallander. ‘I’ll explain it all one of these days.’

‘I’m used to waiting.’

‘Waiting for what?’

‘For explanations. Including from my children when they don’t do as I tell them. But that was mainly when they were younger.’

‘Linda was just the same,’ said Wallander, in an attempt to appear interested. He thanked Martinsson again for his help regarding the moon, and hung up. He ate a couple of sandwiches, then lay down with a stone as a pillow.

The pains came from nowhere. He was lying there, looking up at the sky and listening to seagulls screeching in the distance, when he felt a stab of pain in his left arm, which then spread to his chest and stomach. At first he thought he must be lying on a sharp edge of stone, but then he realised that the pains were coming from inside his body, and he suspected that what he had always dreaded had now come to pass. He’d had a heart attack.

He lay completely motionless, stiff and terrified, and held his breath, afraid that if he tried to breathe he would use up the rest of his heart’s ability to beat.

The memory of his mother’s death suddenly came vividly into his mind. It was as if her last moments were being played out by his side. She had been only fifty years old. His mother had never worked outside the home, but had always struggled to maintain her marriage to her temperamental husband, whose income could never be relied on, and look after their two children, Kurt and Kristina. They had been living in Limhamn at the time, sharing a house with a family that Wallander’s father couldn’t stand. The father was a train conductor who never hurt a fly, but once, in the friendliest possible way, he asked Wallander’s father if it might be relaxing to paint some other motif rather than the same old landscape over and over again. Wallander had overheard the conversation. The conductor, whose name was Nils Persson, had used his own working life as an example. After a long period driving back and forth between Malmo and Alvesta, he was very pleased when he was transferred to an express route that went to Gothenburg, and sometimes even as far as Oslo. Wallander’s father had naturally reacted furiously. After that it had been Wallander’s mother who tried to smooth things over and make living alongside the other family not completely intolerable.

Her death had come suddenly one afternoon in the early autumn of 1962. She had been in their little garden, hanging up laundry. Wallander had just come home from school and was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a sandwich. He had looked out of the window and seen her hanging up sheets with some clothes pegs in her hand. He had returned to his sandwich. The next time he looked out, she was on her knees, clutching at her chest. At first he thought she had dropped something, but then he watched her fall over onto her side, slowly, as if she were trying hard not to. He ran outside, shouting her name, but she was beyond help. The doctor who performed the autopsy said she had suffered a massive heart attack. Even if she had been in a hospital when it happened, they wouldn’t have been able to save her.

Now he could see her in his mind’s eye, a series of blurred, jerky images as he tried to keep his own pains at arm’s length. He didn’t want his life to end early like hers had, and least of all now, all alone on a little island in the Baltic Sea.

He said silent, agitated prayers - not really to any god, but more to himself, urging himself to resist, not to allow himself to be dragged down into eternal silence. And he eventually realised that the pains were not getting any worse; his heart was still beating. He forced himself to remain calm, to act sensibly, not to sink into a desperate and blind panic. He sat up gingerly and felt for his mobile phone, which he had left next to his backpack. He started to dial Linda’s number but changed his mind. What would she be able to do? If he really had suffered a heart attack, he should be calling the emergency number.

But something held him back. Perhaps it was the feeling that the pain was receding? He carefully moved his left arm and found a position in which the pain was less, as well as other positions where it was worse. That was not in accordance with the symptoms of a serious heart attack. He sat up slowly and took his pulse. It was seventy-four beats per minute. His normal rate was somewhere between sixty-six and seventy-eight. Everything was as it should be. It’s stress, he thought. My body is simulating something that can afflict me if I don’t take it easy.

He lay down again. The pain faded away even more, even if it was still present, nagging away, a sort of background threat.

An hour later he was convinced that he hadn’t in fact suffered a heart attack. It had been a warning. He thought, I should stop fooling myself that I’m an irreplaceable police officer and take a proper holiday. Perhaps he should go home, call Ytterberg and tell him what conclusions he had drawn. But he decided to stay on. He had come a long way, and he was keen to establish if his suspicions were justified or not. No matter what the outcome, he could then hand the matter over to Ytterberg and not bother with it any more.

He felt very relieved. It was a sort of positive affirmation of life that he hadn’t experienced for years. He had an urge to stand up and roar in the direction of the open sea. But he remained seated, leaning against the tree trunk, watching the boats passing and relishing the smell of the sea. It was still warm. He lay down with his jacket draped over him and fell asleep. He woke up after about ten minutes. The pains had almost gone altogether now. He stood up and started walking around the little island. On one side, facing south, the rock formed an almost vertical cliff. It was strenuous, skirting it at the very edge of the water.

He suddenly stopped dead. There was a small, narrow creek about twenty yards ahead. A boat had anchored at its entrance, and a dinghy had been beached on the rocks. A couple was lying at the edge of the water, making love. He pressed himself against the cliff, but he couldn’t resist the temptation to watch. They were young - barely twenty years old, he guessed. He stared as if bewitched at their naked bodies before gathering the strength to drag himself away and retrace his steps as quietly as possible. A few hours later, as twilight was at last beginning to creep up on the island, he saw the motor cruiser with the dinghy bobbing along behind it sailing past. He stood up and waved. The couple on board waved back.

In a way he was jealous of them. But his thoughts were far from gloomy. His own earliest erotic experiences had been just like most other people’s - uncertain, disappointing, bordering on the embarrassing. He had never really believed his friends’ descriptions of their escapades and conquests. It was only after he met Mona that sex had become a serious pleasure as far as he was concerned. During their early years together their sex life was beyond his wildest dreams. He had achieved considerable satisfaction with a handful of other women, but nothing like what he and Mona experienced at the beginning of their relationship. The big exception in his life was, of course, Baiba.

But he had never made love to a woman on a rock by the open sea. The nearest he had been to something as risky as that was when he had been slightly tipsy and managed to entice Mona into a toilet on a train. But they had been interrupted by angry pounding on the door. Mona had found it embarrassing in the extreme, and insisted angrily that he promise never again to try to engage her in such erotic adventures.

And he never had. Towards the end of their long relationship and marriage, their sexual desire had ebbed - although it returned in spades for Wallander when she told him she wanted a divorce. But she had no longer accepted his advances. Her door was locked, once and for all.

Suddenly he seemed to see his life mapped out before his very eyes. Four decisive moments. The first was when I rebelled against my dominating father and became a police officer, he thought. The second was when I killed a man in the line of duty, and didn’t think I could take any more, but in the end decided not to resign from the police force. The third was when I left Mariagatan, moved out to the country and got Jussi. The fourth was probably when I finally accepted that Mona and I could never live together again. That was probably the most difficult to negotiate. But I’ve made my choices; I haven’t ummed and aahed and then realised one day that it was too late. I have nobody but myself to thank for that. When I see the bitterness in a lot of people around me, I’m glad I’m not one of them. Despite everything, I’ve tried to take responsibility for my life, and not merely allowed it to float away at the mercy of whatever current came along.

As dusk fell, so the mosquitoes arrived to plague him. But he had remembered to take mosquito repellent, and he pulled the hood of his anorak over his head. There weren’t many motor cruisers to be heard now, plying the surrounding channels and straits. A lone yacht was heading for the open sea.

Shortly after midnight, with the mosquitoes whining around his ears, he left the island. He followed the increasingly dark silhouettes of the islands lining the route he had planned with the aid of his sea chart. He was travelling slowly, constantly checking to make sure he didn’t deviate from his course. When he was approaching his goal he reduced his speed still further, and eventually he switched off the engine completely. A gentle evening breeze had begun to blow. He tilted up the motor, set up the oars and started rowing. He occasionally paused and tried to peer through the darkness, but he couldn’t see any light, and that worried him. There should be a light, he thought. It shouldn’t be dark.

He rowed up to the beach and climbed cautiously out of the boat. There was a scraping noise as he pulled it over the shingle. He tied the painter around some of the alders growing on the shore. He had taken the torches out of his backpack before he beached the boat, and now he put one of them in his pocket. He held the other one in his hand.

But there was something else that he was groping for, among the sandwich wrappings and the spare clothes. He had also packed his service pistol. He had hesitated until the very last moment, but eventually he made up his mind and put it in his backpack, along with a full magazine. He wasn’t at all sure why he had done this. There was nothing to suggest that he was exposing himself to immediate physical danger.

But Louise is dead, he had thought. And Hermann Eber convinced me that she was murdered. Until I have more information, I have to assume that the culprit could be Hakan, even if I have neither proof nor motive.

He loaded the pistol and checked that the safety catch was on. Then he switched on the torch and checked that the blue filter he had placed over the lens was still in place. The light was very pale, and would be difficult to detect by anybody not on his guard.

He listened through the darkness. The noise from the sea drowned out other sounds. He put his backpack back into the boat, then checked the painter and made sure that the boat was securely moored. He began walking slowly and carefully away from the shore. The brushwood was dense near the water’s edge. He had been walking for only a few yards when he stepped into a spiderweb, and he started flailing with his arms when he realised that an enormous spider was clinging to his anorak. He could cope with snakes, but not spiders. Instead of fumbling through the brush, he decided to walk along the shore in the hope of finding somewhere where it was less overgrown. After about fifty yards he came to a place where the remains of an old slipway could be made out. Since he had never been ashore on this island before, and had seen it only from a boat, he was finding it difficult to orient himself. The last time he was here they had passed by on the other side, facing west. This time he had landed on the east side, hoping that this was what you might call the rear of the island.

His mobile phone started ringing in one of his pockets. He cursed under his breath as he pulled and tugged at his clothes in an effort to find it, dropping the torch in the process. He counted at least six rings before he finally succeeded in switching it off. He could see from the display that it was Linda who had been trying to reach him. He put the phone in his breast pocket and closed the zip. The ringing had sounded like an alarm in his ears. He listened hard, but there was nothing to be seen or heard in the darkness. Only the surging of the sea.

He continued cautiously on his way until he could make out the outline of the house shrouded in darkness. He stationed himself behind an oak tree, but he couldn’t see any trace of a light. I got it wrong, he thought. There’s nobody here. My deduction was simply wrong.

But then he noticed a faint gleam of light seeping out from between a lowered blind and a window frame. When he came closer he could see more faint glows from other windows as well.

He walked as quietly as he could around the house. The windows were blacked out, as if it were wartime and all lights had been extinguished in order to confuse the enemy. I am the enemy, Wallander thought.

He pressed his ear against the wooden wall and listened. He could hear the murmur of voices, and occasionally music. From a television set or a radio, he couldn’t be sure which.

He withdrew into the shadows again and tried to make up his mind about what to do next. He had planned only as far as the point where he now found himself. Now what? Should he wait until the next morning before knocking on the door and waiting to see who answered?

He hesitated. He was annoyed by his indecision. What was he afraid of?

He had no time to answer that question. He felt a hand on his shoulder, gave a start and turned round. Even though this was the reason he had set out on his journey, he was still surprised to see Hakan von Enke standing there in the darkness, wearing a tracksuit top over a pair of jeans. He was unshaven and in need of a haircut.

They stared at each other without speaking, Wallander with his torch in his hand, von Enke barefoot on the wet soil.

‘I suppose you heard the phone ringing?’ Wallander said.

Von Enke shook his head. He seemed to be not only scared, but rueful.

‘I have alarms set all around the house. I’ve spent the last ten minutes trying to work out who tracked me to this island.’

‘It’s only me,’ said Wallander.

‘Yes,’ said Hakan von Enke. ‘It’s only you.’

They went into the house. It was only when everything was lit up that Wallander noticed that von Enke was also armed. He was carrying a pistol, tucked into his waistband.

What’s he afraid of? Wallander thought. Who is he hiding from?

The surging of the sea could no longer be heard. Wallander contemplated the man who had been missing for such a long time.

They sat down and said nothing for a while. Eventually they began talking, hesitantly. Slowly, approaching each other with maximum caution.

PART 4

The Phantom

31

It was a long night. Several times it seemed to Wallander that it was a direct continuation of the conversation he and von Enke had had nearly six months previously, in a windowless room off a banqueting hall just outside Stockholm. What he was now beginning to understand surprised him, but it was a more than sufficient explanation of why von Enke had been so worried on that occasion.

Wallander felt nothing like a Stanley who had now found his Livingstone. He had guessed right, that was all. Once again, his intuition had shown him the path to follow. If von Enke was surprised at his hideaway being discovered, he didn’t show it. Wallander thought the old submarine commander was displaying his cold-blooded nature. He didn’t allow himself to be surprised, no matter what happened.

The hunting lodge that seemed so primitive from the outside gave quite a different impression once Wallander had crossed the threshold. There were no inside walls, just one large room with an open kitchenette. A small extension containing a bathroom was the only space with a door. In one corner of the room was a bed. It’s on the small side, Wallander observed, more like a hammock, or the little bunk that even a commander has to make do with on board a submarine. In the middle of the room was a large table covered with books, files and documents. On one of the short walls was a shelf containing a radio, and there was a television set and a record player on a little table. Next to it was a dark red old-fashioned armchair.

‘I didn’t think you’d have electricity here,’ said Wallander.

‘There’s a generator sunk in a little basement blasted out of the rock. You can’t hear the engine even when the water is dead calm.’

Von Enke stood by the stove, making coffee. Neither of them spoke, and Wallander tried to prepare himself for the conversation that would follow. But now that he’d found the man he’d spent so much time looking for, he didn’t know what to ask him. All his previous thoughts seemed to be a blurred jumble of unfinished conclusions.

‘If I remember correctly,’ said von Enke, interrupting Wallander’s thoughts, ‘you take neither milk nor sugar?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t have any bread or biscuits to offer you. Are you hungry?’

‘No.’

Von Enke cleared off part of the big table. Wallander noted that most of the books were about modern warfare and contemporary politics. One that seemed to have been read more than any of the others was titled simply The Submarine Threat.

The coffee was strong. Von Enke was drinking tea. Wallander regretted not having chosen the same.

It was ten minutes to one.

‘Naturally I understand that you have a lot of questions you want answers to,’ said von Enke. ‘I may not be able or willing to answer all of them, but before we come to that I must ask you a few questions. First and foremost: did you come here alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who else knows where you are?’

‘Nobody.’

Wallander could see that von Enke wasn’t sure whether to believe him.

‘Nobody,’ he repeated. ‘This trip was entirely my own idea. Nobody else has been involved.’

‘Not even Linda?’

‘Not even Linda.’

‘How did you get here?’

‘In a little boat with an outboard motor. If you want I can give you the name of the firm I hired it from. But the man had no idea where I was going. I told him I was going to surprise an old friend for his birthday. I’m sure he believed me.’

‘Where is the boat?’

Wallander pointed over his shoulder.

‘On the other side of the island. Beached, and tied up to some alder trees.’

Von Enke sat there silently, staring at his teacup. Wallander waited.

‘How did you find me?’

Von Enke seemed tired when he asked the question. Wallander could understand that being on the run was strenuous, even if you weren’t on the move all the time.

‘When I visited Boko, Eskil Lundberg mentioned in passing that this cottage was perfect for anybody who wanted to disappear from the face of the earth. We were on the way to the mainland when we sailed past. You know I’ve been to see him, of course. What he said stayed at the back of my mind, nagging away at me. And then when I heard that you were particularly fond of islands, I realised that this might be where you were.’

‘Who told you about me and my islands?’

Wallander decided on the spot not to say anything about Sten Nordlander for the time being. He could give von Enke an answer that would be impossible to check.

‘Louise.’

Von Enke nodded, silently. Then he straightened his back, as if steeling himself for battle.

‘We can do this in two ways,’ Wallander said. ‘Either you tell me all about it, or I ask questions and you answer them.’

‘Am I accused of anything?’

‘No. But your wife is dead, so you are automatically a suspect.’

‘I can understand that completely.’

Suicide or murder, Wallander thought. You seem to be well aware of the score. Wallander knew he had to proceed cautiously. After all, the man he was talking to was somebody he knew very little about.

‘Let’s hear it, then,’ said Wallander. ‘I’ll interrupt you if anything is unclear. You can start at Djursholm, when you had your birthday party.’

Von Enke shook his head demonstratively. His tiredness seemed to have evaporated. He walked over to the stove, refilled his cup with hot water and added a new tea bag. He remained standing, cup in hand.

‘I need to begin earlier than that. There can be only one starting point,’ he said. ‘It’s simple, but absolutely true. I loved my wife, Louise, more than anything else in the world. God forgive me for saying it, but I loved her more than I did my son. Louise embodied the happiness in my life - seeing her come into a room, seeing her smile, hearing her moving around in the next room.’

He fell silent and gave Wallander a look that was both piercing and challenging. He demanded an answer, or at least a reaction from Wallander’s side.

‘Yes,’ said Wallander. ‘I believe you.’

Von Enke began his story.

‘We need to go back a long way. There’s no need for me to go into detail. It would take too much time, and it isn’t necessary. But we have to go back to the 1960s and 70s. I was still active on board naval vessels then, often in command of one of our most modern minesweepers. Louise was working as a teacher. She spent her free time coaching young divers, and once in a while visited Eastern Europe, mainly East Germany, which in those days was very successful in producing champions. Nowadays we know that this was due to a combination of fanatical, almost slavish training techniques and an advanced use of various drugs. At the end of the 1970s I was transferred to staff duties and promoted to the top operations command of the Swedish navy. That involved a lot of work, much of it done at home. Several evenings every week I used to take home secret documents. I had a gun cupboard because I occasionally used to go hunting, mainly for deer, but sometimes I used to take part in the annual elk hunt. I had my rifles and ammunition locked away in that cupboard, and I also used to put my secret documents in there overnight, or when Louise and I went out, either to the theatre or to some dinner party.’

He paused, carefully removed the tea bag from his cup and put it on a saucer, then continued.

‘When exactly do you notice that something is not as it should be? The almost invisible signs that suggest something has been changed, or moved? You are a police officer - I assume you must often find yourself in situations where you catch on to these vague signals. One morning, when I opened the gun cupboard, I noticed that something was wrong. I can still recall how I felt. I was just going to take out my briefcase when I paused. Had I really left it the way it was now? There was something about the lock, and the position of the handle. My doubts bothered me for about five seconds, no more. Then I dismissed them. I always used to check that all the documents were where they should be, and that morning was no exception. I didn’t think any more about it. I think I’m pretty observant and have a good memory. Or at least, that was the case when I was younger. As you grow older, all your faculties deteriorate bit by bit, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You are considerably younger than I am, but maybe you’ve noticed this?’

‘Eyesight,’ Wallander said. ‘I have to buy new reading glasses every couple of years. And I don’t think I hear as well as I used to.’

‘It’s your sense of smell that lasts best as you grow older. That’s the only one of my senses that I think is unaffected. The smell of flowers is just as clear and subtle as it ever was.’

They sat there in silence. Wallander noticed a rustling sound in the wall behind him.

‘Mice,’ said von Enke. ‘It was still cold when I first came here. At times there was a hellish rustling and rattling inside the walls. But one of these days I’ll no longer be able to hear the mice scampering around under the floorboards.’

‘I don’t want to interrupt your story,’ Wallander said. ‘But when you vanished that morning, did you come straight here?’

‘I was picked up.’

‘By whom?’

Von Enke shook his head, didn’t want to answer. Wallander didn’t press him.

‘Let me go back to the gun cupboard,’ von Enke continued. ‘A few months later I had the impression yet again that my briefcase had been moved. I decided I was imagining it. The documents inside the briefcase hadn’t been jumbled up or interfered with in any other way. But since this was the second occasion, I was worried. The keys to the gun cupboard were underneath some letter scales on my desk. The only person who knew where the keys were was Louise. So I did what you have to do when there’s something worrying you.’

‘What?’

‘I asked her outright. She was in the kitchen, having breakfast.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She said no. And asked the obvious question: why on earth would she be interested in what was in my gun cupboard? I don’t think she ever liked the idea of my keeping guns in the apartment, even if she never said anything about it. I remember feeling ashamed when I walked down the stairs to the car waiting to take me to general staff headquarters. The job I had then gave me the right to have a chauffeur.’

‘What happened next?’

Wallander noticed that his questions were disturbing von Enke, who wanted to dictate the pace of his revelations himself. He raised his hands as a sort of apology, indicating that he wouldn’t interrupt any more.

‘I’m convinced that Louise told me the truth. But even after that I still had the feeling that my briefcase and my documents had been interfered with. I started to set little traps: I purposely put some of the papers in the wrong order, I left a strand of hair over the lock of my briefcase, a blob of grease on the handle. What was hardest to grasp was why Louise would be interested in my papers. I couldn’t believe it had to do with pure curiosity or jealousy. She knew there was no reason at all to suspect anything like that. It was at least a year before I first began to wonder if the unthinkable really was a possibility.’

Von Enke paused briefly before continuing.

‘Could Louise be in touch with a foreign power? It seemed highly improbable for a very simple reason. The documents I took home with me were rarely anything that could be of the slightest interest to a foreign intelligence service. But I couldn’t help feeling worried. I was starting to distrust my wife, to suspect her of treachery for no reason other than a strand of hair that had been disturbed. In the end - and by then it was the late 1970s - I decided to establish once and for all whether or not my suspicions of Louise were justified.’

He stood up and rummaged around in a corner of the room full of maps. He came back with a scroll, which he spread out over the table - a sea chart of the central area of the Baltic Sea. He placed pebbles on the corners to weigh it down.

‘Autumn 1979,’ he said. ‘To be more precise, August and September. We were due for our usual autumn manoeuvres involving nearly all our naval vessels. There was nothing special about this particular exercise. It was while I was attached to the general staff, and my role was to be an observer. About a month before the manoeuvres were to take place, when all the plans and timetables were already drawn up, the navigation routes established and the vessels assigned to specific areas, I made my own plan. I created a document and labelled it “Secret”. It was even signed by the supreme commander - although he knew nothing about it, of course. I introduced into the exercise a top-secret element featuring one of our submarines being refuelled in very advanced fashion by a remotely controlled tanker. It was all a complete fabrication, but something that could just about be regarded as possible. I noted the exact location and the precise time when the exercise would take place. I knew that the destroyer Smaland, with the observers on board, would be close to that location at that time. I took the document home with me, locked it in the gun cupboard overnight, then hid it in my desk when I went to staff headquarters the following day. I repeated the same procedure for several days. The next week I placed the document in a secure bank vault I had rented for this very purpose. I considered tearing it up, but I knew I might need it some day as proof. The month that passed before the manoeuvres took place was the worst I have ever endured. I had to make sure that Louise didn’t suspect anything, but I had set a trap for her that would shatter both of us if my suspicions turned out to be well founded.’

He pointed to a spot on the sea chart. Wallander leaned forward and saw that it was a point just north-east of Gotska Sandon.

‘This is where the alleged meeting between the submarine and the nonexistent tanker was supposed to happen. It was on the periphery of the area where the manoeuvres would be held. There was nothing unusual about the fact that Russian vessels were keeping track of us. We did the same when Warsaw Pact countries’ manoeuvres were under way. We used to keep at a discreet distance, avoiding provocation. I chose this location for the fictitious meeting because the supreme commander was due to be dropped off at Berga that same morning, so the destroyer would be in the right place, on its way to where the exercises were in full swing, when my fictional refuelling operation was to happen.’

‘I don’t want to interrupt,’ said Wallander, ‘but was it really possible to stick to such a tight schedule when so many vessels were involved?’

‘That was part of the point of the whole manoeuvre. What you need in wartime is not just a lot of money, but also a high degree of punctuality.’

Wallander gave a start when there was a loud thud on the roof of the lodge. Von Enke didn’t seem to react at all.

‘A branch,’ he said. ‘They sometimes fall down and hit the roof with quite a bang. I’ve offered to saw down the dried-out, dead oak tree, but nobody round here seems to have a chainsaw. The trunk is enormous. I would guess that the oak dates from the middle of the nineteenth century or thereabouts.’

He reverted to his account of what happened at the end of August 1979.

‘The autumn manoeuvres acquired some added spice that nobody had foreseen. The Baltic Sea south of Stockholm was hit by a severe south-westerly gale that the forecasters had failed to predict. One of our submarines, commanded by one of our best young captains, Hans-Olov Fredhall, suffered rudder damage and had to be towed into Braviken to wait there until we could take it back to Musko. Those on board no doubt had a less than enjoyable time during the storm - submarines can roll like nobody’s business. And in addition, a corvette sprang a leak off Havringe. The crew had to be taken off and transferred to another ship, but the corvette didn’t sink. Anyway, large parts of the exercise couldn’t be carried out as planned. The winds had slackened somewhat by the time we were ready for the last phase of the manoeuvres. I must admit, I could hardly sleep for days before the imaginary meeting of the submarine and the tanker, but nobody seemed to notice that I was behaving any differently from usual. We dropped off the supreme commander, who was pleased with what he had seen. The captain on board the Smaland suddenly and unexpectedly ordered full steam ahead, to check that his vessel was in tiptop condition. I was worried at first that we would pass the spot too soon, but the high waves prevented the destroyer from exceeding the speed I had based my calculations on. I spent the whole morning on the bridge. Nobody thought there was anything odd about that - I was a commander myself, after all. The captain had handed over responsibility for the ship to his deputy, Jorgen Mattsson. At a quarter to ten he handed me his telescope and pointed. It was raining, and very misty, but there was no doubt about what he had detected. There were two fishing boats ahead of us to port, sporting all the aerials and security equipment we were familiar with on Russian naval patrol boats. No doubt they didn’t have a single fish in their holds, but we could be certain that there were Russian technicians on board, listening to our radio communications. I should perhaps mention that we were in international waters; they had every right to be where they were.’

‘So they were waiting for a submarine and a tanker?’

‘Mattsson didn’t know that, of course. “What do they think they’re doing?” he asked. “Way outside the area where our manoeuvres are taking place?” I still recall what I said in reply. Perhaps they really are ordinary fishing boats. But he wasn’t convinced. He called down to the captain, who came onto the bridge. The destroyer paused while we reported the presence of the fishing boats. A helicopter came and hovered around for a while before we moved on and left them alone. By then I had left the bridge and gone down to the cabin I used during the manoeuvres.’

‘So now you knew what you didn’t want to know?’

‘It was an experience that made me feel sick, in a way that no bout of seasickness in the world could have achieved. I threw up when I came to my cabin. Then I lay down, thinking about how nothing could ever be like it had been before. There was no other possibility: the document I had forged had come into the hands of the Warsaw Pact countries. Louise could have had an accomplice, of course; that was what I hoped. I didn’t want her to be the direct link to the foreign intelligence services, but rather an assistant to a spy who had all the important contacts. But I couldn’t even bring myself to believe that. I had investigated her life in the tiniest detail and knew there was nobody she met regularly. I still had no idea how she operated. I didn’t even know how she had copied my forged document. Had she taken a photograph, or written it out? Had she simply memorised it? And how had she passed on the information? Even more important, of course, was where she got all her other secret documents. The sparse contents of my gun cupboard couldn’t be enough. Who was she cooperating with? I didn’t know, although I spent all my spare time for more than a year trying to work out what had happened. But I was forced to believe the evidence of my own eyes. I lay there in the cabin, and felt the vibrations from the powerful engines. There was no longer any escape. I had to acknowledge that I was married to a woman I didn’t know. Which meant that I didn’t know myself either. How could I have misunderstood her so fundamentally?’

Hakan von Enke stood up and rolled up the sea chart. When he had put it back on its shelf, he opened the door and went outside. What Wallander had heard still hadn’t sunk in. It was too big. And there were too many unanswered questions.

Von Enke came back in, closed the door and checked that his flies were closed.

‘You’re telling me about things that happened almost thirty years ago,’ Wallander said. ‘That’s a long time. What about what’s happening now?’

Von Enke suddenly seemed reluctant, sullen, when he replied.

‘What did I say when we began this conversation? Have you forgotten? I said that I loved my wife. I couldn’t do anything to change that, no matter what she had done.’

‘Surely you must have confronted her with what you knew.’

‘Must I?’

‘It was one thing for her to commit an offence against our country, but she had also let you down. Stolen your secrets. You couldn’t possibly have kept on living with her without telling her what you knew.’

‘Couldn’t I?’

Wallander could hardly believe what he’d heard. But the man rolling the empty teacup between his hands seemed convincing.

‘Are you telling me you didn’t say anything to her?’

‘Never.’

‘Never? That sounds implausible.’

‘But it’s true. I stopped taking secret documents home with me. It wasn’t anything sudden or unexplained. When my duties changed, there was every reason for my briefcase to be empty in the evenings.’

‘She must have noticed something. It’s impossible to believe she didn’t.’

‘I never said anything to her. She was exactly the same as before. After a few years I began to think it had all been a bad dream. But of course, I might have been wrong. She might have realised that I’d seen through her. So we carried on sharing a secret without being sure what the other one knew or didn’t know. It went on like that until one day, everything changed.’

Wallander sensed rather than knew what he was referring to.

‘You mean the submarines?’

‘Yes. By then there was a rumour going around that the supreme commander suspected there was a spy in the Swedish defence forces. The first warning had come when a Russian defector spoke out in London. There was a spy in the Swedish military that the Russians valued extremely highly. Somebody a cut above the norm who knew how to get at the really significant information.’

Wallander shook his head slowly.

‘This is difficult to understand,’ he said. ‘A spy in the Swedish military. Your wife was a schoolteacher; she coached gifted young divers in her spare time. How could she have access to military secrets if your briefcase was empty?’

‘I seem to recall that the Russian defector was called Ragulin. He was one of many defectors at that time; we sometimes found it difficult to tell them apart. Obviously, he didn’t know the name of or any details about the person the Russians more or less worshipped. But there was one thing he did know, and it changed the whole picture dramatically. For me as well.’

‘What?’

Von Enke put down the empty cup. It was as if he were bracing himself. As he did so, Wallander remembered that he had heard Hermann Eber talking about another Russian defector, by the name of Kirov.

‘It was a woman,’ he said. ‘Ragulin had heard that the Swedish spy was a woman.’

Wallander said nothing.

The mice were nibbling away quietly in the walls of the hunting lodge.

32

On one of the windowsills was a half-finished ship in a bottle. Wallander noticed it when von Enke left the table and went outside for the second time. It seemed that he was too distraught to continue, having been forced to admit to somebody else that his wife had been a spy. Wallander saw the tears in his eyes when he suddenly excused himself and left the room. He left the door open. Daylight was beginning to break outside, so there was no longer any risk that anybody might notice lights switched on in the lodge. When von Enke came back, Wallander was still engrossed in imagining the delicate work involved in making the tiny ship.

‘The Santa Maria,’ said von Enke. ‘Columbus’s ship. It helps me to keep unwanted thoughts at bay. I learned the art from a sailor - an old naval engineer with alcohol problems. It wasn’t possible to allow him on board any more. Instead he used to wander around Karlskrona, criticising everybody and everything. But remarkably enough, he was a master of making ships in bottles, despite the fact that you’d have thought his hands shook far too much for that. I’ve never had the time to attempt anything of the sort until I came here to the island.’

‘A nameless island,’ said Wallander.

‘I call it Blue Island. It has to be called something. Blue Moon and Blue Ridge are already taken.’

They sat down at the table again. By means of some kind of unspoken agreement they had each made it clear to the other that sleep could wait. They had begun a conversation that needed to be continued. Wallander realised that it was his turn now. Hakan von Enke was waiting for his questions. He started with what he considered the beginning.

‘When you celebrated your seventy-fifth birthday,’ Wallander began, ‘you wanted to talk to me. But I’m still not clear about why you chose to talk about those events with me rather than somebody else. And we never really got to the point. There was a lot I didn’t understand. I still don’t understand it.’

‘I thought you should know. My son and your daughter, our only children, will spend the rest of their lives together, we hope.’

‘No,’ said Wallander. There was some other reason, I’m sure. And I have to say that I was very upset to discover you haven’t been telling me the whole truth.’

Von Enke looked at him in incomprehension.

‘You and Louise have a daughter,’ Wallander said. ‘Signe, who leads a sort of life at Niklasgarden. So you see, I even know where she is. You’ve never said anything about her. Not even to your son.’

Hakan von Enke was staring at him. He had stiffened in his armchair. This is a man who is not often caught off guard, Wallander thought. But right now he is really on the spot.

‘I’ve been there,’ Wallander went on. ‘I’ve seen her. I also know that you visited her regularly. You were even there the day before you disappeared. We can choose to keep on not telling the truth, to turn this conversation into something that doesn’t clarify but merely makes what is unclear even more obscure. It’s our choice. Or rather, your choice. I’ve already made mine.’

Wallander eyed von Enke, wondering why he seemed to be hesitating.

‘You’re right, of course,’ said von Enke eventually. ‘It’s just that I’m so used to denying Signe’s existence.’

‘Why?’

‘It was for Louise’s sake. She always felt strangely guilty about Signe. Despite the fact that Signe’s handicaps weren’t caused by something that went wrong during childbirth, or by something Louise had done or eaten or drunk while she was pregnant. We never spoke about Signe. As far as Louise was concerned, she simply didn’t exist. But she existed for me. I was always tormented by not being able to say anything to Hans.’

Wallander said nothing. It suddenly dawned on von Enke why.

‘You told him? Was that necessary?’

‘I would have regarded it as shameful if I hadn’t told him he had a sister.’

‘How did he take it?’

‘He was upset, which is understandable. He felt cheated.’

Von Enke shook his head slowly.

‘I’d made a promise to Louise, and I couldn’t break that promise.’

‘That’s something you have to talk to him about yourself. Or not. Which leads me to an entirely different question. What were you doing in Copenhagen a few days ago?’

Von Enke’s surprise was genuine. Wallander felt that he now had the upper hand; the key was how to exploit that in order to make the man on the other side of the table tell the truth. There were still a lot of questions to be asked.

‘How do you know I’ve been in Copenhagen?’

‘I’m not going to answer that question at the moment.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because the answer is of no significance. Besides, I’m the one asking the questions now.’

‘Am I suppose to interpret that to mean I’m now being subjected to a police interrogation?’

‘No. But don’t forget that you have subjected your son and my daughter to incredible stress and strain since you went missing. To tell you the truth, I’m furious when I think about how you’ve behaved. The only way you can keep me calm is to give honest answers to my questions.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘Did you make contact with Hans?’

‘No.’

‘Did you intend to?’

‘No.’

‘What were you doing there?’

‘I went to withdraw some money.’

‘But you said just now that you hadn’t been in touch with Hans. As far as I’m aware, he oversaw your and Louise’s savings.’

‘We had an account with Danske Bank that we kept control of ourselves. After I retired I did some consultancy work for the manufacturers of a weapons system for naval vessels. They paid in US dollars. Obviously, some tax evasion was involved.’

‘What kind of sums are we talking about?’

‘I can’t see how that could be of any relevance. Unless you intend to report me for tax evasion?’

‘You’re suspected of more important things. But answer the question!’

‘About half a million Swedish kronor.’

‘Why did you choose to have an account in a Danish bank?’

‘The Danish krone seemed stable.’

‘And there was no other reason for going to Copenhagen?’

‘No.’

‘How did you get there?’

‘By train from Norrkoping. I went there by taxi. Eskil, whom you’ve met, took me to Fyrudden. And he picked me up when I came back.’

Wallander found no reason to doubt what he had heard, at least for the time being.

‘And Louise knew all about your undeclared money?’

‘She had the same access to the account as I did. Neither of us had a bad conscience. We both thought that Swedish taxation rates were disgracefully high.’

‘Why did you need the money now?’

‘Because I’d run out of cash. Even if you live frugally, you’re always spending money.’

Wallander left Copenhagen for the time being and returned to Djursholm.

‘There’s one thing I’ve been wondering about that only you can answer. When we were standing in the conservatory, you noticed a man in the street, behind my back. I’ll admit that I’ve spent ages wondering about this. Who was it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But you seemed worried when you noticed him.’

‘I was scared.’

The admission came out like a roar. Wallander was on his guard. Perhaps being on the run for such a long time had, after all, taken its toll on the man sitting opposite him. He decided to tread carefully.

‘Who do you think it was?’

‘I’ve already said I don’t know. And it’s not important. He was there to remind me. That’s what I think, at least.’

‘Remind you of what? Don’t make me drag every answer out of you.’

‘Somehow or other Louise’s contacts must have realised that I suspected her. Maybe it was she herself who told them I’d discovered her. It wasn’t the first time I’d had the feeling I was being watched. But the other occasions were not as clear-cut as that one at Djursholm.’

‘Are you saying that somebody was shadowing you?’

‘Not all the time. But I sometimes noticed that I was being followed.’

‘How long had that been going on?’

‘I don’t know. It might have been happening for a long time without my noticing. For many years.’

‘Let’s move on from that conservatory to the windowless room,’ Wallander said. ‘You wanted us to be away from the rest of the guests so that we could talk. But I don’t know why you picked me to be your confessor.’

‘It wasn’t planned at all; I acted on the spur of the moment. I sometimes surprise myself with the sudden decisions I make. I expect that happens to you as well. I thought the whole celebration was unpleasant. It was my seventy-fifth birthday, and I was throwing a party that I didn’t really want. I was pretty close to panic.’

‘It seemed to me afterwards that there was a hidden message in what you told me. Was I right to suspect that?’

‘No. I simply wanted to talk. I suppose I might have wanted to see if I could confide my secret in you later on - the probability that I was married to a traitor.’

‘Wasn’t there anybody else you could talk to? Sten Nordlander, for instance? Your best friend?’

‘I was ashamed at the mere thought of revealing my misery to him.’

‘What about Steven Atkins? You had told him about your daughter, after all.’

‘I was drunk at the time. We had drunk lots of whisky. I regretted saying anything afterwards. I thought he had forgotten about it. But evidently not.’

‘He assumed that I knew about her.’

‘What do my friends say about my disappearance?’

‘They’re worried. Shaken. The day they discover you’ve been hiding away, they will be very upset. I suspect you will lose them. Which leads me to the question of why you disappeared.’

‘I felt I was under threat. The man on the other side of that fence was just a sort of prologue. I suddenly began noticing shadows everywhere, no matter where I went. It wasn’t like that before. I received strange phone calls. It was as if they always knew where I was. One day when I was visiting the National Maritime Museum a guard came to tell me there was a phone call for me. A man speaking broken Swedish issued a warning. He didn’t say precisely what for, just that I should watch my step. It started to become intolerable. I had never been so scared in all my life. I came very close to approaching the police and reporting Louise. I considered sending an anonymous letter. In the end I couldn’t keep going any longer. I made arrangements to rent this hunting lodge. Eskil drove to Stockholm and picked me up when I was outside the stadium on my morning walk. Since then I’ve been here the whole time, apart from that trip to Copenhagen.’

‘It’s still incomprehensible to me that you never confronted Louise with your suspicions, which had become convictions. How could you live with somebody who was a spy?’

‘I did confront her. Twice. The first time was the year Palme was killed. That had nothing to do with it, of course, but they were unsettled times. I was sitting with my colleagues, drinking coffee and talking about my suspicions that there was a spy in our ranks. It was a terrible situation, nibbling on a biscuit and talking about a possible spy who I thought might well be my wife.’

Wallander had a sudden attack of sneezing. Von Enke waited until it had passed.

‘I confronted her in the summer of 1986,’ he said. ‘We had gone to the Riviera with some friends of ours, a Commander Friis and his wife - we used to play bridge with them. We were staying at a hotel in Menton. One evening Louise and I went for a walk through the town. Suddenly, I stopped dead in my tracks and asked her outright. I hadn’t planned to; I suppose you could say that something snapped inside me. I stood in front of her and asked her. Was she a spy or wasn’t she? She was upset, refused to answer at first, and raised a hand as if to hit me. Then she recovered her self-control and replied calmly that of course she wasn’t a spy. How on earth could such a ridiculous thought have entered my head? What did she have to say that could be of any interest to a foreign power? I remember her smiling. She didn’t take me seriously, and as a result I couldn’t do so either. I simply couldn’t believe that she was so convincing as a dissembler. I apologised, and made the excuse that I was tired. For the rest of that summer I was convinced I’d been wrong. But in the autumn my suspicions returned.’

‘What happened?’

‘The same thing again. Papers in the gun cupboard, a feeling that somebody had disturbed my briefcase.’

‘Did you notice any changes in her after you revealed your suspicions in Menton?’

He thought before answering.

‘I’ve asked myself the same question. I sometimes thought she was acting differently, but at other times not. I’m still not sure.’

‘What happened the second time you put her on the spot?’

‘It was the winter of 1996, exactly ten years later. We were at home. We were having breakfast, and it was snowing outside. She suddenly asked me about something I’d shouted at her during the night, while I was asleep. She claimed that I’d accused her of being a spy.’

‘Had you?’

‘I don’t know. I do sometimes talk in my sleep, but I never remember anything about it.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I turned her question on its head. I asked her if what I’d been dreaming was true.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She threw her napkin at me and stormed out of the kitchen. It was ten minutes before she came back. I remember checking the clock. Nine minutes and forty-five seconds, to be exact. She apologised and insisted, once and for all, as she put it, that she didn’t want to hear any more talk about my suspicions. They were absurd. If I ever repeated the accusations, she would be forced to conclude that I was either out of my mind or going senile.’

‘What happened then?’

‘Nothing. But my misgivings were not allayed. And rumours were still circulating about a spy in the Swedish military. Two years later things came to a point when I really did begin to think that I was going out of my mind.’

‘What happened?’

‘I was summoned to an interrogation by the military security services. They didn’t make any direct accusations, but it seems that for a while I was one of those suspected of being a spy. It was a grotesque situation. But I recall thinking that if Louise had sold military secrets to the Russians, she had found a perfect cover.’

‘You?’

‘Exactly. Me.’

‘So then what happened?’

‘Nothing. The rumours kept circulating, sometimes stronger than at others. Many of us were interrogated, even after we had retired. And as I said, I had the feeling I was being watched.’

Von Enke stood up, switched off the lamps that were still on, and opened some of the curtains. A grey dawn and an equally grey sea could be glimpsed through the trees. Wallander went over to one of the windows. A storm was brewing. He was worried about the boat. Von Enke accompanied him when he went to check that the painter was secure. A few eiders bobbed up and down on the choppy waves. The sun was beginning to disperse the night mist. The boat seemed safe enough, but the two men used their combined strength to drag it further up the pebbly beach.

‘Who killed Louise?’ Wallander asked when they had finished with the boat.

Von Enke turned to face him. It occurred to Wallander that he must have confronted Louise in Menton in more or less the same way.

‘Who killed her? You’re asking me? All I know is that it wasn’t me. But what do the police think? What do you think?’

‘The man in Stockholm who’s in charge of the case seems to be good. But he doesn’t know. Not yet, perhaps I should say. We tend not to jump to conclusions.’

They returned to the hunting lodge in silence, sat down at the kitchen table again, and continued their conversation.

‘We must begin at the beginning,’ said Wallander. ‘Why did she go missing? The obvious conclusion for third-party observers like me was that the two of you had a pact of some sort.’

‘That wasn’t the case. The first I knew of her disappearance was when I read about it in the papers. It was a shock.’

‘So she didn’t know where you were?’

‘No.’

‘How long did you intend to remain in hiding?’

‘I needed to be left in peace, to think. And I’d received death threats. I needed to find a way out.’

‘I met Louise on several occasions. She was genuinely and deeply concerned about what might have happened to you.’

‘She fooled you just as she’d fooled me.’

‘I’m not sure. Could she not have loved you just as much as you loved her?’

Von Enke said nothing, merely shook his head.

‘Did you do it?’ Wallander asked. ‘Was that the escape route you hit upon?’

‘No.’

‘You must have spent hours thinking, brooding, lying sleepless in this hunting lodge. I believe you when you say you loved Louise. Nevertheless, you didn’t leave your hideaway when she died. One would have thought that the danger to your life was over now that she was dead. But you still stayed in hiding. I can’t make sense of that.’

‘I’ve lost twenty pounds since she died. I can’t eat; I can hardly sleep. I try to understand what has happened, but I can’t make head or tail of it. It’s as if Louise has become a stranger to me. I don’t know who she used to meet, or what led to her death. I don’t have any answers.’

‘Did she ever give you the impression that she was afraid?’

‘Never.’

‘I can tell you something that hasn’t appeared in the newspapers, something the police haven’t yet released for public consumption.’

Wallander told him about the suspicions that Louise had been killed by a poison that had previously been used in East Germany.

‘It seems likely that you’ve been right all along,’ Wallander concluded. ‘Somewhere along the way your wife, Louise, became an agent for the Russian intelligence service. She was who you suspected she was. She was the spy the Russians talked about.’

*

Von Enke stood up and stormed out of the house. Wallander waited. After a while he began to worry, and he went out to investigate. He eventually found von Enke lying in a gully on the side of the island facing the open sea. Wallander sat down on a rock by his side.

‘You must come back,’ he said. ‘Nothing will ever be solved if you continue to hide here.’

‘Perhaps the same poison is lying in wait for me. What will be gained if I die as well?’

‘Nothing. But the police have resources to protect you.’

‘I have to get used to the idea. That I was right after all. I have to try to understand why and how she did what she did. I can’t return until I’ve done that.’

‘You’d better not take too long,’ said Wallander, standing up.

He returned to the hunting lodge. Now he was the one making the coffee. He was feeling the strain of the long night. When von Enke returned, he had already emptied his second cup.

‘Let’s talk about Signe,’ Wallander said. ‘I went to see her, and I discovered a folder you’d hidden among her books.’

‘I loved my daughter. But I made my visits in secret. Louise never knew I’d been there.’

‘So you’re the only one who ever visited her?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re wrong. Since you went missing, somebody else has been there at least once. He claimed to be your brother.’

Hakan von Enke shook his head in disbelief.

‘I don’t have a brother. I have a relative who lives in England, but that’s all.’

‘I believe you,’ said Wallander. ‘We don’t know who visited your daughter. Which might suggest that everything is even more complicated than either you or I could have foreseen.’

Wallander could see that Hakan von Enke’s demeanour had suddenly changed. Nothing they had talked about had worried him as much as the news that somebody else had visited Signe at Niklasgarden.

It was nearly six o’clock. Their long nocturnal conversation was over. Neither of them had the strength to continue.

‘I will leave now,’ said Wallander. ‘At the moment, I’m the only one who knows you are here. But you can’t wait forever before returning to civilisation. Besides, I’ll keep on pestering you with questions. Think about who it might have been who visited Niklasgarden. Someone must have been on your trail. Who? Why? We must keep this conversation going.’

‘Tell Hans and Linda that I’m OK. I don’t want them to worry. Tell them I sent you a letter.’

‘I’ll say you called. The first thing Linda would do would be to demand to see the letter.’

They went to the boat and together shoved it out onto the water. Before leaving the house, Wallander had made a note of von Enke’s phone number. But he also established that communications links to Blue Island could be bad. The wind was getting stronger. Wallander was starting to worry about the journey back. He clambered onto the boat and lowered the outboard motor.

‘I have to know what happened to Louise,’ said von Enke. ‘I must know who killed her. I need to know why she chose to lead the life of a traitor.’

The engine started at the first pull. Wallander waved goodbye and headed for the mainland. Just before rounding the Blue Island promontory he looked back. Hakan von Enke was still standing on the beach.

At that moment Wallander had a premonition that something was wrong. He didn’t know what, or why. But the feeling was very strong.

He returned the boat and set off on the long drive back to Skane. He stopped at a lay-by near Gamleby and slept for a few hours.

When he woke up, feeling stiff, the premonition was still there. After that long night with Hakan von Enke, one thing still nagged away at him.

It was a sort of warning. Something didn’t add up, something he had overlooked.

When he pulled into the parking area outside his house many hours later, he still didn’t know what it was that he’d missed.

But he thought: Nothing is what it seems to be.

33

The following day, Wallander wrote a summary of his conversation with Hakan von Enke. Once again he went through all the material he had gathered. Louise was still a mystery to him. If it was true that she had sold information to the Russians, she had cleverly hidden herself behind a mask of insignificance. Who was she, really? Wallander asked himself. Perhaps she was one of those people who become comprehensible only after they are dead.

It was a windy, rainy day in Skane. Wallander observed the dreary weather through his windows, and concluded that this summer promised to be one of the worst he could remember. Nevertheless, he forced himself to go for a long walk with Jussi. He needed to get his blood moving and clear his head. He longed for calm, sunny days when he could lie down in his garden without needing to trouble his brain with the problems that were occupying him now.

When he had returned after the walk and taken off his wet clothes, he sat down by the phone in his shabby old robe and began leafing through his address book. It was full of crossed-out phone numbers, changes and additions. In the car the day before, he had remembered an old school friend, Solve Hagberg, who might be able to help him. It was his phone number he was looking for. He’d made a note of it when they bumped into each other by pure chance in a Malmo street a few years ago.

Solve Hagberg was an odd person even as a child. Wallander recalled with a sense of guilt that he had been one of the students who bullied Solve, because of his near-sightedness and his determination to actually learn something at school. But all attempts to undermine Solve’s self-confidence had failed. All the scornful abuse, all the punches and kicks had been shaken off, like water off a duck’s back.

After leaving school they had not been in contact until one day Wallander was amazed to discover that Solve Hagberg was going to take part in a TV show called Double or Quits. Even more astonishing was that his chosen subject was going to be the history of the Swedish navy. He had been overweight as a child, another reason why he had been bullied. But if he’d been overweight then, he was positively fat now. He seemed to roll up to the microphone on invisible wheels. He was bald, wore rimless glasses, and spoke with the same broad Scanian accent that Wallander remembered from school. Mona had commented disparagingly on his appearance and gone into the kitchen to make coffee, but Wallander stayed to watch him answer all the questions correctly. He won, thanks to precise and detailed replies delivered with complete self-confidence. As far as Wallander could recall, he hadn’t hesitated for a moment. He really did know everything about the long, complicated history of the Swedish navy. It had been Hagberg’s big ambition to become a naval officer. But thanks to his ungainliness he had been turned down as a recruit and sent back home to his books and model ships. Now he had taken his revenge.

For a short while the newspapers showed an interest in this strange man, who still lived in Limhamn and made a living writing articles for journals and books published by various military institutions. The press wrote about Hagberg’s comprehensive archive. He had detailed information about Swedish naval officers from the seventeenth century to the present day, constantly updated. Perhaps Wallander might be able to find something in this archive to tell him more about who Hakan von Enke really was.

He finally found Hagberg’s number scribbled in the greasy margin of the letter H. He picked up the phone and dialled. A woman answered. Wallander gave his name and asked to speak to Solve.

‘He’s dead.’

Wallander was dumbstruck. After a few seconds of silence the woman asked if he was still there.

‘Yes, I’m still here. I had no idea he was dead.’

‘He died two years ago. He had a heart attack. He was in Ronneby, addressing a group of retired naval engineers. He collapsed during the dinner following his lecture.’

‘I take it you are his wife?’

‘Asta Hagberg. We were married for twenty-six years. I told him he should lose weight, but all he did was put three sugars in his coffee instead of four. Who are you?’

Wallander explained, and decided to end the call as quickly as possible.

‘You were one of the kids who used to torment him,’ she surprised him by saying. ‘I remember your name now. One of the bullies at school. He had a list of your names, and kept tabs on how you led your lives. He wasn’t ashamed to feel pleased when things went badly for anyone on the list. Why are you calling? What do you want?’

‘I’d hoped to be allowed access to his archive.’

‘I might be able to help you, but I don’t know if I should. Why couldn’t you leave him alone?’

‘I don’t think any of us really understood what we were doing. Children can be cruel. I was no exception.’

‘Do you regret it?’

‘Of course.’

‘Come by, then. Solve suspected that he wouldn’t live much longer, so he taught me all about the archive and how to use it. What will happen to it when I’m gone, I don’t know. But I’m always at home. Solve left a fair amount of money, so I don’t need to work.’

She laughed.

‘Do you know how he made his money?’

‘I expect he was much sought-after as a lecturer.’

‘He never asked to be paid for that. Try again!’

‘Then I don’t know.’

‘He played poker. He went to illegal gaming clubs. I suppose that’s something you deal with in your work?’

‘I thought people turned to the Internet these days for gambling.’

‘He couldn’t be bothered with that. He went to his clubs, and was away for several weeks sometimes. Once in a while he lost a large amount of money, but usually he came home with a suitcase full of cash. He told me to count it and put it in the bank. He would then go to bed and sleep, often for days on end. The police were here now and then, and he was sometimes arrested when they raided a club, but he was never charged. I think he had an understanding with the police.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Can I mean anything but that he sometimes tipped them off? Maybe some wanted persons turned up at the clubs with money they’d stolen? Nobody would ever imagine that nice old Fatman Solve could be a copper’s nark, would they? Anyway, are you coming or aren’t you?’

When Wallander wrote down the address he realised that Solve had always lived on the same street in Limhamn. Wallander and Asta agreed that he would go there at five o’clock that same afternoon. Next he called Linda. He got her answering machine and left a message saying that he was at home. Then he went through the contents of the fridge and threw away all the food that had passed its use-by date and wrote a shopping list. The fridge was almost completely empty now. He was just about to leave the house when Linda called.

‘I just got back from the chemist’s. Klara’s not well.’

‘Is it serious?’

‘You don’t need to sound as if she were at death’s door every time. She has a temperature and a sore throat. That’s all.’

‘Has the doctor seen her?’

‘I called the health centre. I think I have everything under control. As long as you don’t get all excited and irritate me. Where have you been?’

‘I’m not saying at the moment.’

‘Aha, a woman, in other words. Good.’

‘Not a woman. But I have an important piece of news. I received a phone call not long ago. From Hakan.’

At first she didn’t seem to understand. Then she shouted into the receiver.

‘What? Hakan called you? What the hell are you saying? Where is he? How is he? What’s happened?’

‘Stop shouting at me! I don’t know where he is. He didn’t want to tell me. He just said that he was well. It didn’t sound as if there was anything wrong with him.’

Wallander could hear her heavy breathing. He felt very uncomfortable lying to her. He regretted having made that promise before he left the island. I’ll tell her the facts, he thought. I can’t deceive my own daughter.

‘It seems so unlikely. Did he say anything about why he ran away?’

‘No. But he did say that he had nothing to do with Louise’s death. He was just as shocked as the rest of us. He hadn’t had any contact with her after he left.’

‘Were Hans’s parents both crazy?’

‘I can’t comment on that. But in any case, we can be glad that he’s still alive. That was the only message he wanted me to pass on to you. That he was well. But he couldn’t say when he would return, or why he was in hiding.’

‘Did he say that? That he was in hiding?’

Wallander realised that he had revealed too much. But it was too late for him to retract.

‘I don’t remember exactly what words he used. Don’t forget that I was astonished by the call as well.’

‘I have to speak to Hans. He’s in Copenhagen.’

‘I’ll be out all afternoon. Call me this evening. Then we can talk more. I want to know how Hans reacts.’

‘He can hardly be anything but happy.’

Wallander replaced the receiver in disgust. When Linda discovered the truth he would have to deal with her fury.

He left for Limhamn. He didn’t really know what to expect, but when he arrived he experienced the usual mixture of discomfort and loss that always affected him when he returned to the place where he grew up. He parked the car not far from Asta Hagberg’s house, then strolled to the apartment building where he had lived as a child. The facade had been renovated and a new fence had been put up, but nevertheless he remembered everything. The sandbox he used to play in was bigger now than it was in those days, and the two birch trees he used to climb were no longer there. He paused on the pavement and watched some children playing. They were dark-skinned, no doubt from the Middle East or North Africa. A woman wearing a hijab was sitting by the entrance door, knitting and keeping an eye on the children. He could hear Arabic music wafting through an open window. This is where I used to live, he thought. In another world, another time.

A man came out of the building and approached the gate. He was also dark-skinned. He smiled at Wallander.

‘You looking for someone?’ he asked in uncertain Swedish.

‘No,’ said Wallander. ‘I used to live here many years ago.’

He pointed up at a window on the first floor, which in the old days had belonged to their living room.

‘This is a nice house,’ said the man. ‘We like it here; the children like it. We don’t have to feel afraid.’

‘Good. People shouldn’t be afraid.’

Wallander nodded and left. The feeling of growing old was oppressive. He quickened his pace, in order to get away from himself.

The garden surrounding the house where Asta Hagberg lived was well tended, but the woman who answered the door was just as fat as he remembered Solve Hagberg being on the TV show. She was sweaty; her hair was tousled and her skirt much too short. At first he thought she was wearing strong perfume, but then he realised that the whole house reeked of unusual aromas. Does she go around spraying the furniture with perfume? he wondered. Does she drench the pot plants in musk?

She offered him coffee, but he declined. He was already feeling sick, thanks to the overpowering smells streaming into his nose from all over the house. When they went into the living room, Wallander had the feeling that he was entering the bridge of a large ship. Wherever he looked there were ships’ wheels, compasses with beautifully polished brass fittings, votive ships hanging from the ceiling and an old-fashioned hammock attached to one of the walls. Asta Hagberg crammed herself into a captain’s chair that Wallander presumed had also come from a seagoing vessel. He sat down on what at first looked like a perfectly normal sofa - but a brass plate proclaimed that it had once belonged to the Swedish American Line’s Kungsholm.

‘How can I help you?’ she asked, lighting a cigarette that she had put in a holder.

‘Hakan von Enke,’ Wallander said. ‘An old submarine commander, now retired.’

Asta Hagberg was suddenly stricken by a violent coughing fit. Wallander hoped that this overweight smoker wouldn’t collapse and die before his very eyes. He guessed she was his own age, about sixty.

She kept on coughing until tears came to her eyes. Then she continued smoking serenely.

‘The Hakan von Enke who’s gone missing,’ she said. ‘And his dead wife, Louise? Am I right?’

‘I know that Solve had a unique archive. I wonder if there might be something in it that can help me understand why Hakan von Enke has disappeared.’

‘He’s dead, of course.’

‘In which case it’s the cause of his death that I’m looking for,’ Wallander said non-comittally.

‘His wife committed suicide. That suggests the family was struggling with major problems. Doesn’t it?’

She went to a table and removed a cloth that had been draped over a computer. Wallander was surprised by how agile her fat fingers were as she tapped away at the keyboard. After a few minutes she leaned back and squinted at the screen.

‘Hakan von Enke’s career was as normal as can be. He progressed about as far as you might have expected. If Sweden had been dragged into the war, he might have achieved a rank or two higher, but that’s doubtful.’

Wallander stood up and joined her in front of the computer. The stench of perfume was so strong that he tried to breathe through his mouth. He read what it said on the screen, and looked at the photograph that must have been taken when von Enke was about forty.

‘Is there anything at all that’s unusual?’

‘No. As a young cadet he won a few prizes in Nordic athletics competitions. A good shot, very fit, first place in a few cross-country races. If you consider that unusual.’

‘Is there anything about his wife?’

Her fat fingers began dancing again. The coughing fit returned, but she carried on until a photograph of Louise appeared on the screen. Wallander guessed that she was about thirty-five, possibly forty. Smiling. Her hair was permed, and she was wearing a pearl necklace. Wallander studied the text. There was nothing that seemed unusual or surprising at first glance. Hagberg tapped away again and produced a new page. Wallander discovered that Louise’s mother came from Kiev. ‘In 1905 Angela Stefanovich married the Swedish coal exporter Hjalmar Sundblad. She moved to Sweden and became a Swedish citizen. She had four children with Hjalmar, and Louise was the youngest.’

‘As you can see, everything is normal,’ said Hagberg.

‘Apart from the fact that her roots are in Russia?’

‘Ukraine, we would say nowadays, I suppose. Most Swedes have roots outside our borders. We are a mixture of Finns, Dutchmen, Germans, Russians, Frenchmen. Solve’s great-grandfather came from Scotland, and my grandmother had links to Turkey. What about you?’

‘My ancestors were farmers in Smaland.’

‘Have you looked into your ancestry? Properly, I mean?’

‘No.’

‘When you do, you may find something unexpected. Mark my words. It’s always exciting, but not always pleasant. I have a good friend who’s a vicar in the Swedish Church. When he retired he decided to do some research into his family roots. He soon discovered two people, direct ancestors, who had been executed within the space of fifty years. One was at the beginning of the seventeenth century. He had been convicted of robbery and murder, and was beheaded. His grandson was conscripted into one of the German armies marching around Europe in the middle of the seventeenth century. He deserted, and was hanged. After that my friend the vicar gave up delving into his roots.’

She stood up with considerable difficulty and gestured to Wallander to follow her into an adjacent room. There were rows of filing cabinets along the walls. She unlocked one of the drawers.

‘You never know what you might find,’ she said as she started searching through the files.

She took one out and placed it on a table. It was full of photos. Wallander didn’t know if she was searching for something specific or just looking through them at random. She stopped when she came to a black-and-white photo and held it up to the light.

‘I had a vague memory of having seen this picture. It’s not without interest.’

She handed it to Wallander, who was surprised by what it depicted. A tall, slim man in an immaculate suit and a bow tie, smiling merrily: Stig Wennerstrom. He was holding a glass in his hand and talking to none other than Hakan von Enke.

‘When was this taken?’

‘It says on the back. Solve was meticulous when it came to recording dates and locations.’

Wallander read what was typed on a slip of paper taped to the back of the photograph. October 1959, Swedish naval delegation visiting Washington DC, reception hosted by Military Attache Wennerstrom. Wallander tried to work out what it implied. If it had been Louise standing there it would have been easier to guess a connection, but she wasn’t present. All he could see in the background was a group of men and a waitress dressed in white.

‘Did the wives usually accompany their husbands on such trips?’ he asked.

‘Only when the top brass were out and about. Wennerstrom often took his wife with him on trips and to receptions, but at that time von Enke was well short of top brass. He presumably travelled alone. If Louise had been with him, he would have needed to pay for her himself. And in any case, she certainly wouldn’t have been present at a reception given by the Swedish military attache.’

‘I’d be interested in knowing if she did make that trip.’

Hagberg suffered another coughing fit. Wallander moved to a window and opened it slightly. The smell of perfume was bothering him.

‘It will take a while,’ she said when the fit was over. ‘I need to do some searching. But obviously, Solve recorded the details of this and all other journeys made by Swedish military delegations.’

Wallander returned to the sofa from the Kungsholm. He could hear Hagberg humming to herself in a side room as she hunted for the list of those present on various trips to America at the end of the 1950s. It took her almost forty minutes, with Wallander growing increasingly impatient, before she returned with a look of triumph in her eyes, brandishing a sheet of paper.

‘Mrs von Enke was there,’ she said. ‘She is specifically classified as “accompanying”, with some abbreviations that probably indicate that the armed forces were not paying her fare. If it’s important, I can look up the precise meaning of the abbreviations.’

Wallander took the sheet of paper. The delegation, led by Commander Karlen, comprised eight people. Among those ‘accompanying’ were Louise von Enke and Marta Auren, the wife of Lieutenant Commander Karl-Axel Auren.

‘Can one copy this?’ Wallander asked.

‘I don’t know what “one” can do, but I have a photocopier in the basement. How many copies do you need?’

‘One.’

‘I usually charge two kronor per copy.’

She headed for the basement. So the von Enkes had been in Washington for eight days. That meant that Louise could have been contacted by somebody. But was that really credible? he asked himself. So soon? Mind you, the Cold War was becoming more intense at the end of the fifties. It was a time when Americans saw Russian spies on every street corner. Did something significant happen during this journey?

Asta Hagberg returned with a copy of the document. Wallander placed two one-krona coins on the table.

‘I suppose I haven’t been as much help as you’d hoped,’ said Hagberg.

‘Looking for missing persons is usually a tedious and very slow process. You progress one step at a time.’

She accompanied him to the gate. He was relieved to breathe in unper-fumed air.

‘Feel free to get in touch again,’ she said. ‘I’m always here, if I can be of any help to you.’

Wallander nodded, and walked to his car. He was just about to leave Limhamn when he decided to make one more visit. He had often thought about investigating whether a mark he had made nearly fifty years ago was still there. He parked outside the churchyard, made his way to the western corner of the surrounding wall and bent down. Had he been ten or eleven at the time? He couldn’t remember, but he’d been old enough to have discovered one of life’s great secrets: that he was who he was, a person with an identity all his own. That discovery had sparked a temptation inside him. He would make his mark in a place where it would never disappear. The low churchyard wall topped by iron railings was the sacred place he had chosen. He had sneaked out one autumn evening, with a strong nail and a hammer hidden under his jacket. Limhamn was deserted. He had selected the spot earlier: the stones in the section of wall close to the western corner were unusually smooth. Cold rain had started to fall as he carved his initials, KW, into the churchyard wall.

Wallander found those initials without difficulty. The letters had faded and were not as clear now, after all those years. But he had dug deep into the stone, and his mark was still there. I’ll bring Klara here sometime, he thought. I’ll tell her about the day when I decided to change the world. Even if it was only by carving my initials into a stone wall.

He went into the churchyard and sat down on a bench in the shade of a tree. He closed his eyes and thought he could hear his own childhood voice echoing inside his head, sounding like it did when it was cracking and he was troubled by everything the adult world stood for. Maybe this is where I should be buried when the time comes, he thought. Return to the beginning, be laid to rest in this same soil. I’ve already carved my epitaph into the wall.

He left the churchyard and went back to his car. Before starting the engine he thought about his meeting with Asta Hagberg. What had it accomplished?

The answer was simple. He had not progressed a single step forward. Louise was just as big a mystery as she had been before. The wife of an officer, not present in any photographs.

But the unease he had felt ever since meeting Hakan von Enke on his island was still there.

I can’t see it, he thought. Whatever it is that I should have discovered by now.

34

Wallander drove home. He could cope with the fact that his visit to Asta Hagberg had not produced results, but his sorrow following the death of Baiba weighed heavily on him. It came in waves, the memory of her sudden visit and then her equally sudden departure. But there was nothing he could do about it; in her death he also envisaged his own.

When he had parked the car, released Jussi and allowed him to run off, he poured himself a large glass of vodka and drank it in one swig, standing by the kitchen table. He filled his glass again and took it with him into the bedroom. He pulled down the blinds on the two windows, undressed and lay down naked on top of the bed. He balanced the glass on his wobbly stomach. I can take one more step, he thought. If that doesn’t lead me anywhere, I’ll drop the whole thing. I’ll inform Hakan that I’m going to tell Linda and Hans where he is. If that means he chooses to remain missing and find himself a new hideout, that’s up to him. I’ll talk to Ytterberg, Nordlander and Atkins. Then it’s no longer my business - not that it ever was. Summer is almost over, my holiday has been ruined, and I’ll find myself wondering yet again where all the time has gone.

He emptied the glass and felt the warmth and the sensation of being pleasantly drunk kick in. One more step, he thought again. But what would it be? He put the glass on the bedside table and soon fell asleep. When he woke up an hour later, he knew what he was going to do. While he was asleep, his brain had formulated an answer. He could see it clearly, the only thing that was important now. Who other than Hans could provide him with information? He was an intelligent young man, if not especially sensitive. But people always know more than they think they know, observations they’ve made in their subconscious.

He gathered his dirty laundry and started the washing machine. Then he went out and shouted for Jussi. There was a sound of barking from far away, in one of the neighbours’ newly mown fields. Jussi eventually came bounding up. He had been rolling in something that smelled foul. Wallander shut him in his kennel, got the garden hose and washed him off. Jussi stood there with his tail between his legs, looking pleadingly at Wallander.

‘You smell like shit,’ Wallander told him. ‘I’m not having a stinky dog in my house.’

Wallander went into the kitchen and sat at the table. He wrote down the most important questions he could think of, then looked up Hans’s phone number at work in Copenhagen. When he was told that Hans was busy for the rest of the day with important meetings, he became impatient. He told the girl on the switchboard to inform Hans that he should call Detective Chief Inspector Wallander in Ystad within the next hour. Wallander had just opened the washing machine and realised that he’d forgotten to put in any detergent when the phone rang. He made no attempt to conceal his irritation.

‘What are you doing tomorrow?’

‘I’m working. Why do you sound so angry?’

‘It’s nothing. When do you have time to see me?’

‘It’ll have to be in the evening. I have meetings and appointments all day.’

‘Reschedule them. I’ll be arriving in Copenhagen at two o’clock. I need an hour. No more, but no less.’

‘Did something happen?’

‘Something’s happening all the time. If it was important, I’d have told you already. I just want answers to a few questions. Some new ones, a few old ones.’

‘I’d be grateful if it could wait until the evening. The financial markets are in turmoil.’

‘I’ll be there at two,’ said Wallander.

He replaced the receiver and restarted the washing machine after putting in far too much detergent, though he knew it was childish to punish the washing machine for his own forgetfulness.

He mowed the lawn, raked the gravel paths, lay down in the garden hammock and read a book about Verdi that he’d bought for himself as a Christmas present. When he emptied the washing machine he discovered that a red handkerchief had been lying unnoticed among the white items, and the colour had run, turning everything pink. He started the machine yet again. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed, pricked a fingertip and measured his blood sugar. That was another thing he kept forgetting. But the result was just about acceptable at 146.

While the washing machine was doing its job for the third time, he lay down on the sofa and listened to a newly bought recording of Rigoletto. He thought about Baiba; his eyes filled with tears and he imagined her restored to life. But she was gone, and would never return. When the music had finished he heated a fish stew he had taken out of the freezer and washed it down with a glass of water. He eyed a bottle of wine standing on the worktop but didn’t open it. The vodka he had drunk earlier was enough. He spent the evening watching Some Like It Hot, a favourite of his and Mona’s, on television. He had seen the film many times before, but it still made him laugh.

He slept well that night, to his surprise.

Linda called the next morning as he was having breakfast. The window was wide open; it was a lovely warm day. Wallander was sitting naked on his kitchen chair.

‘What did Ytterberg have to say about Hakan getting in touch?’

‘I haven’t spoken to him yet.’

She was shocked.

‘Why not? If anybody should know that Hakan isn’t dead, surely it’s him.’

‘Hakan asked me not to say anything.’

‘You didn’t tell me that yesterday.’

‘I must have forgotten.’

She realised immediately that his reply was both hesitant and evasive.

‘Is there anything else you haven’t told me?’

‘No.’

‘Then I think you should call Ytterberg the moment we finish this conversation.’

Wallander could hear the anger in her voice.

‘If I ask you a straightforward, honest question, will you give me a straightforward, honest answer?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘What’s behind all this? If I know you, you have an opinion.’

‘Not in this case I don’t. I’m just as bewildered as you are.’

‘But the suggestion that Louise was a spy is just ridiculous.’

‘Whether it’s plausible or not is not something I can judge. The police found those items in her handbag.’

‘Somebody must have planted them there. That’s the only possible explanation. She certainly wasn’t a spy,’ Linda asserted once more.

She paused. Perhaps she was waiting for him to agree. He heard Klara screaming in the background.

‘What’s she doing?’

‘She’s in bed. But she doesn’t want to stay there. Incidentally, that’s something I’ve been wondering: what was I like at her age? Did I cry a lot? Have I asked you that before?’

‘All babies cry a lot.’

‘I was just wondering. I think you see yourself in your children. Anyway, you’re going to call Ytterberg today, I hope?’

‘Tomorrow. But you were a well-behaved child.’

‘Things got worse later, when I was a teenager.’

‘Oh yes,’ Wallander said. ‘Much worse.’

When they hung up, Wallander remained seated. That was one of his worst memories, something he rarely allowed to bubble up to the surface. When she was fifteen, Linda had tried to take her own life. It probably wasn’t all that serious, more of a classic cry for help, a desire to attract attention. But it could have ended very badly if Wallander hadn’t forgotten his wallet and returned home. He had found her, slurring her words, with an empty jar of pills by her side. The panic he felt at that moment was something he had never experienced again. It was also the biggest failure of his life - not having realised how bad she felt as a vulnerable teenager.

He shook off the painful memory. He was convinced that if she had died, he would have taken his own life as well.

He thought back to their conversation. Her absolute certainty that Louise couldn’t have been a spy made him think. It wasn’t a matter of proof, but of conviction. But if she’s right, Wallander thought, what is the explanation? Despite everything, was it possible that Louise and Hakan were somehow working together? Or was Hakan von Enke such a cold-blooded liar that he talked about his great love for Louise in order to ensure that nobody would think what he said wasn’t true? Was he behind her death and now trying to send investigators in the wrong direction?

Wallander scribbled a sentence in his notebook: Linda is convinced that Louise is innocent. But deep down he didn’t believe it. Louise was responsible for her own death. That had to be the case.

Shortly before two Wallander rang the bell outside the glass front door of the exclusive offices at Rundetarn in Copenhagen. A busty young lady let him in through the whispering doors. She called for Hans, who appeared in reception without delay. He looked pale and tired. They passed by a conference room where an argument was taking place between a middle-aged man speaking English and two fair-haired young men speaking Icelandic. Their interpreter was a woman dressed entirely in black.

‘Hard words,’ Wallander said as they passed by. ‘I thought finance people had pretty discreet conversations?’

‘We sometimes say that we work in the slaughterhouse industry,’ Hans said. ‘It sounds worse than it is. But when you work with money, your hands get covered in blood - symbolically speaking, of course.’

‘Why are they arguing so vehemently?’

Hans shook his head.

‘Business. I can’t say what exactly, not even to you.’

Wallander asked no more questions. Hans took him to a small conference room made entirely of glass - even the floor - and apparently hanging on the outside wall of the office building. Wallander had the feeling of being in an aquarium. A woman, just as young as the receptionist, came in with a tray of coffee and Danish pastries. Wallander placed his notebook and pencil by the side of his cup as Hans served the coffee. Wallander noticed that his hands were shaking.

‘I thought the days of the notebook were past,’ said Hans when he had filled both cups. ‘Aren’t police nowadays only issued cassette recorders, or perhaps video cameras?’

‘Television series are not always a true reflection of our work. I do use a tape recorder sometimes, of course. But this isn’t an interrogation; it’s a conversation.’

‘Where do you want to start? I really do have just this one hour. It was extremely difficult to rearrange things.’

‘It’s about your mother,’ Wallander said firmly. ‘No work can be more important than finding out what happened to her. I take it you agree with me on that?’

‘That isn’t what I meant.’

‘OK, let’s discuss what this is all about. Not what you meant or didn’t mean.’

Hans stared hard at Wallander.

‘Let me say from the start that my mother couldn’t possibly have been a spy. Even if she could act a bit secretive at times.’

Wallander raised his eyebrows.

‘That’s something you never said before when we talked about her. That she could be secretive.’

‘I’ve been thinking since we last spoke. I do find her increasingly puzzling. Mainly because of Signe. Can you imagine a more outrageous deceit than concealing from a child that he has a sister? I sometimes regretted being an only child. Especially when I was very young, before I’d started school. But there was never anything evasive in her answers. Now it seems to me that she answered my childish longing with ice-cold indifference.’

‘And your father?’

‘He was never at home in those days. At least, I remember him as being mostly absent. Every time he came through the door, I knew he would soon be leaving again. He always brought me presents. But I didn’t dare enjoy being with him. When his uniform was taken out to be aired and brushed, I knew what was going to happen. The following morning he would leave.’

‘Can you tell me more about what you regard as secretive behaviour on your mother’s part?’

‘It’s hard to pinpoint. Sometimes she seemed preoccupied, sunk so deep in her own thoughts that she grew angry if I happened to disturb her. It was almost as if I’d caused her pain, as if I’d stuck a pin in her. I don’t know if that makes sense to you, but that’s how I remember it. Sometimes she would close her notebooks, or quickly slide something over the paper she was working on when I came into the room.’

‘Was there anything your mother did only when your father wasn’t at home? Any routines that suddenly changed?’

‘No. I don’t think so.’

‘You’re answering too quickly. Think about it.’

Hans stood up and gazed out the windows. Through the floor Wallander could see a street musician down below strumming away at a guitar with a hat in front of him on the pavement. No sound of music penetrated the glass. Hans returned to his chair.

‘What I’m about to say now is nothing I could swear to,’ he said. ‘It could be my imagination, my memory playing tricks. But now that I think about it, when Hakan was away she often talked on the phone, always with the door closed. She didn’t do that when he was at home.’

‘Didn’t talk on the phone or didn’t close the door?’

‘Neither.’

‘Go on.’

‘There were often papers lying around that she worked on. I have the feeling that when Hakan came home the papers were no longer there - there were flowers on the tables instead.’

‘What kind of papers?’

‘I don’t know. But sometimes there were drawings as well.’

Wallander gave a start.

‘Drawings of what?’

‘Divers. My mother was very good at drawing.’

‘Divers?’

‘Various dives, different phases of individual dives. “German leap with full twist” or whatever they say, that sort of thing.’

‘Can you remember any other kind of drawings?’

‘She sometimes drew me. I don’t know where those drawings are, but they were good.’

Wallander broke a Danish pastry in two and dunked one half in his coffee. He looked at his watch. The musician under his feet was still playing his silent music.

‘I’m not quite finished yet,’ said Wallander. ‘Let’s talk about your mother’s views. Political, social, economic. What did she think about Sweden?’

‘Politics were not a topic of conversation in my home.’

‘Never?’

‘One of them might say, “The Swedish armed forces are no longer capable of defending our country,” or something of the sort. The other might reply to the effect that it was the fault of the Communists. And that would be it. Either of them could have said either of those things. They were conservative, of course - we’ve spoken about that already. There was no question of voting for any party other than the Moderates. Taxes were too high. Sweden was allowing in too many immigrants who went on to cause chaos in the streets. I think you could say they thought exactly as you would expect them to.’

‘There was never any exception to that, then?’

‘Never, not that I can recall.’

Wallander nodded and ate the other half of the Danish.

‘Let’s talk about your parents’ relationship with each other,’ he said when he’d finished chewing. ‘What was that like?’

‘It was good.’

‘Did they ever argue?’

‘No. I think they really loved each other. That’s something I’ve thought about since - that as a child I never had the slightest fear that they would divorce. That thought never even occurred to me.’

‘But surely no couple ever lives together without the occasional conflict?’

‘They did. Unless they argued when I was asleep and I didn’t hear them. But I find that hard to believe.’

Wallander had no more questions. But he wasn’t ready to give up.

‘Is there anything else you could say about your mother? She was kind and she was secretive, perhaps mysterious, we know that now. But to be perfectly honest, you seem to know surprisingly little about her.’

‘I’ve come to see that,’ said Hans, with something that Wallander interpreted as painful honesty. ‘There were hardly ever any moments of real intimacy between us. She always kept me at a certain distance. She comforted me if I hurt myself, of course. But with hindsight I can see now that she found that almost troublesome.’

‘Was there any other man in her life?’

That was not a question Wallander had prepared in advance. But now that he’d asked it, it seemed an obvious one.

‘Never. I don’t think there was any disloyalty between my parents. On either side.’

‘What about before they got married? What do you know about that time?’

‘I have the feeling that because they met so early in their lives, neither of them ever had anybody else. Not anyone serious. But of course, I can’t be certain.’

Wallander put his notebook in his jacket pocket. He hadn’t written down a single word. There was nothing to write. He knew as little now as he had before he’d arrived.

He stood up. But Hans remained seated.

‘My father,’ he said. ‘I gather he’s called you. So he’s alive, but he doesn’t want to put in an appearance, is that it?’

Wallander sat down again. The guitar player under his feet had moved on.

‘There’s no doubt that he was the one who called. He said he was well. He gave no explanation of his behaviour. He just wanted you to know that he was alive.’

‘He really said nothing about where he was?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What impression did you get? Was he far away? Did he call from a landline or a mobile phone?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘Because you don’t want to, or because you can’t?’

‘Because I can’t.’

Wallander stood up again. They left the room made of glass. When they passed by the conference room, the door was closed but the people inside were still arguing loudly. They said their goodbyes in reception.

‘Did I help at all?’ Hans asked.

‘You were honest,’ Wallander said. ‘That’s the only thing I can ask for.’

‘A diplomatic answer. So I wasn’t able to give you what you were hoping for.’

Wallander made a resigned gesture. The glass door opened, and he waved as he left. The lift took him silently down to the lobby. He had parked his car in a side street off Kongens Nytorv. Since it was very hot, he took off his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt.

Suddenly he had the feeling he was being watched. He turned round. The street was full of people, but he didn’t recognise any of the faces. After a hundred yards he stopped in front of a shop window and contemplated some expensive ladies’ shoes. He sneaked a look back along the section of street he’d just come from. A man was standing, looking at his wristwatch. Then he moved his overcoat from his right arm to his left. Wallander thought he remembered him from the first time he’d looked round. He turned back to the ladies’ shoes. The man passed behind his back. Wallander recalled something Rydberg had said. You don’t always need to be behind the person you’re shadowing. You can just as well be in front of him. Wallander set off and counted a hundred steps. Then he stopped again and turned round. Now there was nobody who attracted his attention. The man with the overcoat had vanished. When Wallander reached his car he looked round one last time. The people he could see, coming and going, were totally new to him. He shook his head. He must have been imagining things.

He drove back over the long bridge, paused at the Father’s Hat roadside cafe, then headed for home.

When he got out of the car, his mind suddenly went blank. He stood there with the keys in his hand, totally confused. The bonnet was warm. Once again he was panic-stricken. Where had he been? Jussi was barking and jumping up and down in his kennel. Wallander stared at the dog and tried hard to remember. He looked at the car keys, then at the car, hoping they would give him a clue. Almost ten horrifying minutes passed before the blockage crumbled and he remembered what he had been doing. He was drenched in sweat. It’s getting worse, he thought. I have to find out what’s happening to me.

He collected the post and sat down at the garden table. He was still shaken by the attack of forgetfulness.

It was only later, after he had fed Jussi, that he discovered the letter lying among the newspapers he had collected from the mailbox. There was no return address, and he didn’t recognise the handwriting.

When he opened the letter he saw that it was handwritten, and from Hakan von Enke.

35

The letter had been posted in Norrkoping.

There is a man in Berlin by the name of George Talboth. He’s an American, and used to work at their embassy in Stockholm. He speaks fluent Swedish and is regarded as an expert on the relationship between Scandinavia and the Soviet Union and, nowadays, Russia. I got to know him as early as the end of the 1960s when he first came to Stockholm and on several occasions accompanied the then military attache at various receptions and on various visits, including one to Berga. George and I got along well - both he and his wife played bridge - and we started meeting socially. I eventually realised that he was attached to the CIA, but he never tried to elicit secret information from me that I wasn’t authorised to pass on. In about 1974, a year or two later, his wife, Marilyn, was diagnosed with cancer, and died shortly afterwards. That was a catastrophe for George. He and his wife had enjoyed an even closer relationship than Louise and I, if that was possible. He started visiting us more frequently, nearly every Sunday, and often during the week as well. In 1979 he was transferred to the legation in Bonn, and he stayed in Germany after he retired, although he moved to Berlin. It’s possible of course that in his ‘spare time’ he still serves his country, as you might say. But I know nothing about that.I spoke to him on the phone as recently as last December. Although he is now seventy-two, he is still lively intellectually. I’m sure he thinks the Cold War is very much alive. When the Russian empire collapsed, a revolution took place that was every bit as shattering as the events of 1917. But according to George it was only a temporary setback. He thinks the current situation confirms that view: Russia is growing stronger and stronger and making ever greater demands on the world around it. I have taken the liberty of writing to him and asking him to contact you. If there is anybody who might be able to help you in your efforts to find out what happened to Louise, he’s your man. I hope you are not put out by my attempts to make a positive contribution to what I’m sure are your honest efforts to solve this riddle.With respectful greetings,Hakan von Enke

Wallander put the letter down on the kitchen table. It was good, of course, that von Enke had put Wallander in touch with a potentially useful contact. But even so, he didn’t like the letter. Once again he had the impression that there was something going on he hadn’t detected. He read the letter one more time, slowly, as if he were picking his way gingerly through a minefield. Letters need to be deciphered, Rydberg once said. You have to know what you’re doing, especially if the letter might be of significance for a crime investigation. But what was there to decipher? The contents were plain enough.

He measured his blood sugar and this time was less pleased with the result: 184. That was too high. He had forgotten to take his Metformin pills and his insulin. He checked in the fridge and saw that within the next few days he would need to replenish his insulin.

Every day he took no fewer than seven different pills, for his diabetes, his blood pressure and his cholesterol. He didn’t like doing so; it felt like a sort of defeat. Many of his colleagues didn’t take a single pill - or at least, they said they didn’t. In the old days, Rydberg had been scornful of all chemical preparations. He didn’t even take anything for the headaches that plagued him. Every day my body is filled with goodness knows how many chemicals that I don’t really know anything about, Wallander thought. I trust my doctors and the pharmaceutical companies, without questioning the things they prescribe.

He hadn’t even told Linda about all the pills. Nor did she know that he was now injecting himself with insulin. To be on the safe side, he had hidden it behind some jars of mango chutney that he knew she wouldn’t touch.

He read the letter a few more times without discovering anything between the lines. Hakan von Enke was not sending him any hidden messages. He was looking in vain for something that wasn’t there.

That night he dreamed about his father.

*

He had just woken up, shortly after seven, when the phone rang. He assumed it was Linda at this hour, especially since she knew he was on holiday. He picked up the receiver.

‘Is that Knut Wallander?’

It was a man’s voice. His Swedish was perfect, although Wallander could hear a slight foreign accent.

‘I take it I’m talking to Mr Talboth,’ he said. ‘I’ve been expecting to hear from you.’

‘Call me George. I’ll call you Knut.’

‘Not Knut. Kurt.’

‘Kurt. Kurt Wallander. I’m always getting names wrong. When are you coming to visit?’

Wallander was surprised by the question. What had Hakan von Enke written to Talboth?

‘I wasn’t planning on going to Berlin. I didn’t even know you existed until I received a letter yesterday.’

‘Hakan wrote in a letter to me that you would definitely want to come here and talk to me.’

‘Why can’t you come to Skane?’

‘I don’t have a driver’s licence. And I hate travelling by train or flying.’

An American without a driver’s licence, Wallander thought. He must be an extremely unusual person.

‘Maybe I can help you,’ Talboth said. ‘I used to know Louise. Just as well as I knew Hakan. And she was a good friend of my wife, Marilyn. They often used to go out together for tea. Afterwards, Marilyn would tell me what they had been talking about.’

‘And what was that?’

‘Louise nearly always talked politics. Marilyn wasn’t as interested, but she listened politely.’

Wallander frowned. Wasn’t that the opposite of what Hans had said? That his mother never talked about politics, apart from a few brief comments in conversations with her husband?

He was suddenly attracted by the thought of visiting George Talboth in Berlin. He hadn’t been there since the collapse of East Germany. He had been to East Berlin twice in the mid-1980s with Linda, when she had been obsessed by the theatre and had insisted on seeing performances by the Berliner Ensemble. He could still recall his annoyance when the East German border police burst into their sleeping car in the middle of the night and demanded to see his passport. On both occasions they had stayed in a hotel at Alexanderplatz. Wallander had felt uneasy the whole time.

‘I might be able to come see you,’ he said. ‘I could take my car.’

‘You can stay at my place,’ said Talboth. ‘I have an apartment in Schoneberg. When should I expect you?’

‘When would it suit you?’

‘I’m a widower. You’re welcome whenever is good for you.’

‘The day after tomorrow?’

‘I’ll give you my phone number. Call me when you’re approaching Berlin, and I’ll guide you through the city. Do you eat fish or meat?’

‘Both.’

‘Wine?’

‘Red.’

‘That’s all I need to know. Do you have a pencil handy?’

Wallander wrote down the number in the margin of von Enke’s letter.

‘I look forward to meeting you,’ said Talboth. ‘If I understand correctly, your daughter is married to young Hans von Enke?’

‘Not quite. They have a daughter, Klara. But they’re not married yet.’

‘Please bring a photo of your granddaughter.’

Wallander ended the call. He had pictures of Klara pinned up all over the house. He took down two photos from the kitchen wall and put them on the table next to his passport. He ate his breakfast while studying a road atlas to establish how far it was to Berlin from the ferry terminal at Sassnitz. A phone call to the ferry company in Trelleborg provided him with the timetable. He noted down the times and found himself looking forward to the impending journey. I will remember this summer for all the car trips I’ve taken, he thought. It reminds me of when Linda was a little girl and we used to go to Denmark on holiday, sometimes to Gotland, and once even as far as Hammarfest in the north of Norway.

On 23 July he drove along the coast road to Trelleborg to catch a ferry to the Continent. He had told Linda that he planned to spend a few days in Berlin. She hadn’t asked any suspicious questions, merely said that she envied him. He saw on the television that high temperatures in Berlin and central Europe were breaking records.

He decided not to try to do the driving non-stop. He would leave the motorway at some point and stay overnight in a little hotel. He wasn’t in a hurry.

He had a meal on board the ferry, sharing a table with a talkative truck driver who told Wallander he was on the way to Dresden with several tons of dog food.

‘Why would German dogs want to eat food from Sweden?’ Wallander wondered.

‘A good question. But isn’t that what they call the free market?’

Wallander went out on deck. He could understand why a lot of people chose to work on board a ship. Like Hakan von Enke, even if he had spent long periods of his life underwater. Why would anyone want to become a submarine captain? he asked himself. But then again, there are doubtless lots of people who wonder why anyone would want to become a police officer. My own father did.

Shortly after driving out of Sassnitz he pulled into a lay-by, changed his shirt, and put on shorts and sandals. Just for a moment he enjoyed the thought of being able to go wherever he wanted, spend the night wherever he wanted, eat wherever he wanted. That’s what freedom looks like, he thought, and smiled at how pathetic the observation was. An elderly policeman on the run, having escaped from himself.

He drove as far as Oranienburg, on the outskirts of Berlin, before deciding to stop for the night. He spent some time looking for a suitable hotel and eventually chose the Kronhof.

He was given a corner room on the third floor. It was big, with too much heavy, dreary-looking furniture. But Wallander was satisfied. He was on the top floor, so nobody would be walking around over his head during the night. He put on a pair of trousers, then strolled around town for a couple of hours, had a coffee, browsed in an antiques shop and went back to the Kronhof. It was five o’clock. He was hungry, but he decided to eat later. He lay down on the bed with a crossword puzzle. After solving a few clues he fell asleep. It was seven thirty when he woke up. He went down to the restaurant and took a seat at a corner table. It was still early, and there weren’t many diners. He was given a menu by a waitress who reminded him of Fanny Klarstrom. He chose Wiener schnitzel and ordered a glass of wine. The restaurant began to fill up; most of the guests seemed to know one another. He had chocolate pudding for dessert, despite knowing that he shouldn’t eat anything that sweet. He drank another glass of wine and noticed that he was beginning to feel tipsy. But Martinsson wouldn’t be coming here to tell him off.

He asked for the bill at nine o’clock, went up to his room, undressed and got in to bed. But he couldn’t sleep. He suddenly felt restless, harassed. The good feeling he’d enjoyed during his solitary meal had gone. In the end he gave up, dressed again, and went back down to the restaurant, which had a separate bar. He went there and ordered a glass of wine. A group of elderly men were standing, drinking beer. All the tables were empty, apart from one almost next to him. A woman in her forties was sitting there, drinking a glass of white wine and keying a text into her mobile phone. She smiled at Wallander. He smiled back. They raised their glasses and drank to each other. She continued texting. Wallander ordered another glass of wine, and offered one to the woman. She thanked him with a smile, put her phone away and moved over to his table. He explained in bad English that he was a Swede, on his way to Berlin. He was uncertain about how to pronounce Kurt in English, so he told her his name was James.

‘Is that a Swedish name?’ she asked.

‘My mother came from Ireland,’ he told her.

He smiled at his lie, and asked her name. Isabel, she told him. She explained that within the next few years Oranienburg would be swallowed up by Berlin. Wallander was studying her face, which was excessively made up. She gave the impression of being ravaged, worn out. He wondered if she was a woman on the prowl, using this bar as her hunting grounds. But she wasn’t provocatively dressed, he thought. Besides, I’m not looking for a prostitute.

Who was this Isabel he was now sitting with? She said she was a florist, single, with grown-up children who had flown the nest. She lived in an apartment - sehr schon, she insisted it was - in a building overlooking a park that she tried to describe the way to. But Wallander wasn’t interested in a park or ways to get there; he had become entranced by her, could already picture her naked in his hotel room, and that was where he intended to lure her. He could see that she was drunk, and he felt he shouldn’t have anything more to drink either. It was almost midnight, and the barman announced last orders. Wallander asked for the bill, and offered her a glass of wine in his room - that was the first time he’d mentioned that he was staying at the hotel. She didn’t seem surprised; perhaps she knew already. Could there be some kind of communications link between reception and the bar? But he didn’t worry about that. He paid the bill, adding far too big a tip, and ushered her past the unattended reception desk and up to his room. It was only after he had closed the door that he admitted the sad truth: he had no drinks to offer her. There was no minibar - the hotel didn’t have luxuries like that - nor was there any room service. But she knew what was expected of her and suddenly embraced him. He was overcome by a desire that he couldn’t control, and they ended up in his bed. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept with a woman, and he tried to imagine that Isabel’s body belonged to Baiba or Mona, or to other women he had forgotten about long ago. It all happened very quickly, and she was already asleep when Wallander felt desire welling up inside him once more. It was impossible to wake her. Making love to a woman fast asleep was something he couldn’t bring himself to contemplate. He had no option but to go to sleep himself, which he duly did, with one hand between her sweaty thighs.

It was still there when he woke up at dawn. He had a headache, his tongue seemed to be glued to his palate, and he made up his mind on the spot to escape as quickly as possible from the room, and from Isabel, who was still fast asleep by his side. He dressed as quietly as he could; he realised that he wasn’t fit to drive, but he couldn’t entertain the possibility of staying put. He took his suitcase and went down to reception, where a young man was lying fast asleep on a bunk underneath the old-fashioned key rack. He woke up when Wallander shouted for service, presented the bill and handed over the change. Wallander put the keys on the counter alongside a ten-euro note.

‘There’s a woman asleep in my room. I assume that this will cover her as well?’

‘Alles klar,’ said the young man, and yawned.

Wallander hurried to his car and set off for Berlin. But he drove only as far as the first lay-by. He pulled in and moved to the back seat to sleep. He regretted the previous night very much. He tried to convince himself that it was no big deal. After all, she hadn’t asked him for money. She couldn’t have found him totally repulsive.

He woke up at nine o’clock and continued his journey to Berlin. He stopped at a motel just off the motorway and called George Talboth, who had a road atlas handy and soon worked out where Wallander was.

‘I’ll be there in an hour or so,’ he said. ‘Sit out and enjoy the lovely weather.’

‘How will you get here? I thought you said you didn’t have a driver’s licence.’

‘We’ll get around that.’

Wallander bought a coffee served in a cardboard cup and sat down in the shade outside the motel’s restaurant. He wondered if Isabel had woken up yet and asked herself where Wallander had disappeared to. He could recall next to nothing of their awkward and uninspired lovemaking. Had it really happened? He could only remember vague fragments, which just embarrassed him.

He topped up his cup of coffee, and bought a pre-made sandwich. It feels like chewing a sponge, he thought. After having forced half of it down, he threw the rest to some pigeons pecking at the ground not far from where he was sitting.

Time passed, but still nobody appeared looking for a Swedish detective. After another fifteen minutes, a black Mercedes pulled up to the motel. It had diplomatic plates. George Talboth had arrived. A man in a white suit wearing sunglasses stepped out of the car, looked around and homed in on Wallander. He came over and removed his sunglasses.

‘Kurt Wallander?’

‘That’s me.’

George Talboth was over six feet tall, powerfully built, and his handshake would have throttled Wallander if it had been applied to his neck.

‘Sorry I’m late. The traffic was worse than expected.’

‘I did as you suggested and made the most of the good weather. I haven’t even looked at my watch.’

Talboth raised his hand and signalled to the Mercedes with the invisible chauffeur. It drove off.

‘Shall we go?’

They sat in Wallander’s Peugeot. Talboth turned out to be a living GPS and guided Wallander confidently through the increasingly busy traffic. After not much more than an hour they came to an attractive apartment building in the Schoneberg district. It occurred to Wallander that this must be one of the few buildings that had survived World War II, when Hitler shot himself in his bunker and the Red Army fought its way through the city, street by street. Talboth lived on the top floor, in an apartment with six rooms. The bedroom he gave to Wallander was large, with a view over a little park.

‘I’ll have to leave you to your own devices for an hour or two,’ Talboth said. ‘I have a few things to deal with.’

‘I’ll manage.’

‘When I get back we’ll have all the time in the world. There’s an Italian restaurant just down the road that serves excellent food, where we can have a leisurely conversation. How long are you planning to stay?’

‘Not all that long. I thought I’d go home tomorrow, in fact.’

Talboth shook his head vigorously.

‘Out of the question. You can’t possibly do justice to Berlin in such a short time. It would be an insult to this city, which has been at the centre of so much of the world’s tragic history.’

‘We can discuss that later,’ said Wallander. ‘But as I’m sure you understand, old men also have jobs to do.’

Talboth accepted that response, showed Wallander the bathroom, kitchen and extensive balcony, then left. Wallander watched through a window as Talboth once again clambered into the black Mercedes. He took a bottle of beer from the fridge and swigged it back while standing on the balcony. As far as he was concerned, that was a way of saying goodbye to the woman from the previous evening. She no longer existed, except perhaps as a persistent memory in his dreams. That was the way it usually was. He never dreamed about the women he had really been in love with. But the ones with whom he had engaged in more or less unpleasant experiences frequently turned up.

He thought about remembering what he would prefer to forget, and forgetting what he should remember. There was something fundamentally wrong with his way of life. He didn’t know if it was the same for everyone. What did Linda dream about? What did Martinsson dream about? What did his interfering boss, Lennart Mattson, dream about?

He drank another beer, started to feel tipsy, and ran a bath. After a good soak, he felt much better.

George Talboth came back a couple of hours later. They sat out on the balcony and started talking.

That was when Wallander noticed a little stone on the balcony table. A stone he was certain he recognised.

36

There was a question nagging at Wallander during the time he spent with George Talboth. Did he realise that Wallander had noticed the stone? Or didn’t he? Wallander still wasn’t sure when he left for home the following day. But he had no doubt that Talboth was a sharp-eyed man. Things happen at top speed behind those eyes of his, Wallander thought. He has a brain that doesn’t leak, or decline. He may seem uninterested or even apathetic at times, but he is always wide awake.

The only thing Wallander could be sure about was the fact that the stone that had disappeared from Hakan von Enke’s desk was now on a table on the balcony of George Talboth’s apartment. Either that, or an exact copy of it.

The idea of a copy also applied to the man himself. Even at the motel, Wallander had been struck by the feeling that Talboth was very much like somebody else, that he had a doppelganger. Not necessarily somebody Wallander knew personally, rather somebody he had seen before, but he couldn’t remember who.

It wasn’t until the evening that the penny dropped. Talboth looked exactly like the film actor Humphrey Bogart. He was taller, and didn’t have the cigarette constantly glued to his lips; but it wasn’t only his appearance, there was something about his voice that Wallander seemed to recognise from films like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The African Queen. He wondered if Talboth was aware of the similarity, and assumed that he was.

Before they sat down that afternoon Talboth also demonstrated that he had surprises up his sleeve. He opened one of the doors in his apartment that had been kept closed and revealed an enormous aquarium with a whole shoal of red and blue fish swimming silently behind the thick glass. The room was filled with glass tanks and plastic piping, but what astounded Wallander most was that the bottom of the aquarium was criss-crossed by cleverly constructed tunnels through which miniature electric trains were racing round and round. The tunnels were completely transparent, apparently made of glass, and not a drop of water seeped through into them. The fish seemed to be unaware of this railway line at the bottom of their artificially made seabed.

‘The tunnels are almost an exact copy of the one between Dover and Calais,’ said Talboth. ‘I used the original plans and certain constructional details when I made this model.’

Wallander thought of Hakan von Enke sitting in the remote hunting lodge with his ship in a bottle. There’s some kind of affinity between them, in addition to their friendship, he thought. But what that implies, I can’t say.

‘I enjoy working with my hands,’ Talboth went on. ‘Using only your brain isn’t good for you. Do you find that too?’

‘Hardly. My father was pretty handy, but I inherited none of that.’

‘What did your father do?’

‘He produced paintings.’

‘You mean he was an artist? Why did you use the word “produced”?’

‘My father really only painted one motif throughout his life,’ Wallander said. ‘It’s not much to talk about.’

Talboth noted Wallander’s unwillingness to elaborate, and he asked no more questions. They watched the fish swimming slowly to and fro, and the trains rushing through their tunnels. Wallander noticed that they didn’t pass at exactly the same point every time; there was a delay that was hardly noticeable at first. He also noted that at one part of the circuit they used the same stretch of line. He hesitated but eventually asked about what he had observed. Talboth nodded.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I’ve built a short delay into the system.’

He reached up to a shelf and took down an hourglass that Wallander hadn’t registered when he entered the room.

‘This contains sand from West Africa,’ said Talboth. ‘To be more precise, from the beaches of the islands in the little archipelago called Buback. It’s just off the coast of Guinea-Bissau, a country most people have never heard of. It was an old English admiral who decided that this was the perfect sand for the English navy in the days when hourglasses were used for telling the time. If I’d turned the glass at the same moment as I switched on the trains, you’d have discovered that one of the trains catches up with the other one after exactly fifty-nine minutes. I make that happen now and then, to check that the sand in the hourglass isn’t running more slowly, or that the transformer doesn’t need adjusting.’

As a child Wallander had always dreamed of owning a model train set, but his father was never able to afford it. Trains like the ones in front of him now still seemed an unattainable luxury.

They sat down on the balcony. It was a hot summer’s day. Talboth had brought out a jug of iced water and two glasses. Wallander decided that there was no reason to beat around the bush. His first question formulated itself.

‘What did you think when you heard that Louise had disappeared?’

Talboth’s bright eyes were firmly fixed on Wallander.

‘I suppose I wasn’t all that surprised,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t need to tell you what you already know. Hakan’s increasingly intolerable suspicions - I suppose we can call it a certainty now - that he was married to a traitor. Is that what you say? My Swedish isn’t always perfect.’

‘That’s correct,’ said Wallander. ‘If you’re a spy, you are usually a traitor. Unless you deal in more specific things, such as industrial espionage.’

‘Hakan ran away because he couldn’t put up with it any more,’ Talboth said. ‘He needed time to think. Before Louise disappeared he had more or less made a decision. He was going to hand over the proof he had to the military intelligence services. Everything would be done according to the rule book. He didn’t intend to spare himself or his own reputation. He realised that Hans would also be affected, but that couldn’t be helped. It boiled down to a question of honour. When she disappeared, he was dumbfounded. He became increasingly scared. I began to worry after some of the phone conversations I had with him. He almost seemed to be suffering from paranoia. The only explanation he could think of for Louise’s disappearance was that she had managed to read his thoughts. He was afraid she would find out where he was. If not her, one of her employers in the Russian intelligence service. Hakan was convinced that Louise had been and still was so important that they wouldn’t hesitate to kill her in order to prevent any revelations. Even if she was too old now to be an active spy, it was important that she not be unmasked. Naturally, the Russians didn’t want to reveal what they knew. Or didn’t know.’

‘What did you think when you heard that she had committed suicide?’

‘I never believed that. I thought it was obvious she had been murdered.’

‘Why?’

‘Let me answer by asking a question. Why would she commit suicide?’

‘Perhaps she was overwhelmed by guilt. Perhaps she realised the torture she had inflicted on her husband. There are lots of possible reasons. In my police work I’ve come across a lot of people who committed suicide for much less serious reasons.’

Talboth considered what Wallander had said.

‘You may be right. But I haven’t told you my overall impression of Louise. I knew her well. Even though she concealed large parts of her identity, I got to know her intimately. She wasn’t the kind of person who commits suicide.’

‘Why do you think that?’

‘Certain people simply don’t commit suicide. It’s as straightforward as that.’

Wallander shook his head.

‘That’s not my experience,’ he said. ‘My feeling is that, under unfortunate circumstances, anybody at all can take their own life.’

‘I’m not going to start arguing with you. You can interpret my view however you like. I’m convinced that your experience as a police officer is important. But you shouldn’t just shrug off the experience I have from working for many years in the American security services.’

‘We know now that she was in fact murdered. And we also know that there was incriminating evidence in her handbag.’

Talboth had raised his glass of water. He frowned and put it down again without having drunk. Wallander thought he detected a different kind of alertness in him.

‘I didn’t know that. I had no idea they’d confiscated secret material.’

‘You’re not supposed to know. I shouldn’t have told you. But I did so for Hakan’s sake. I trust it will go no further.’

‘I won’t say anything to anybody. You learn how to do that when you work in the intelligence service. The day you resign, nothing is left in your head. You clear out your memory just as other employees clear out their lockers or desks.’

‘What would you say if I were to tell you that Louise was probably poisoned using methods patented by the East Germans in the good old days? In order to conceal executions and make them look like suicides?’

Talboth nodded slowly. Once again he raised his glass of iced water to his mouth; this time he drank some.

‘That also happens in the CIA,’ he said. ‘Needless to say, we have often found ourselves in a position that made it necessary to liquidate somebody. In such a way that convinced everybody it was suicide.’

Wallander wasn’t surprised by Talboth’s unwillingness to talk about things not directly connected to Hakan or Louise von Enke; but he’d made up his mind to take this as far as possible.

‘Anyway, we can assume that Louise was murdered,’ Wallander said.

‘Could it be the Swedish secret service that liquidated her?’

‘That’s not the way things work in Sweden. Besides, there’s no reason to assume she’d been unmasked. In other words, we don’t have a potential perpetrator with a plausible motive.’

Talboth moved his wicker chair into the shade. He said nothing for a while, chewing his bottom lip.

‘It’s tempting to think that it’s a sort of crime of passion,’ he said eventually.

He sat upright on his chair.

‘Working in Sweden was naturally never the same as being behind the Iron Curtain, for as long as it existed,’ he said. ‘Anybody who was caught there was almost always executed. Assuming you weren’t so important that you could be used in exchange deals. One traitor swapped for another. Spies can get careless when they’ve been out in the field, always in danger of being exposed. The pressure can become too much. That’s why spies sometimes turn against one another. The violence turns in on itself. Somebody’s success can give rise to jealousy, and the competitive urge replaces cooperation and loyalty. That is a distinct possibility in Louise’s case. For a very special reason.’

Now it was Wallander’s turn to move his chair into the shade. He leaned forward to pick up his glass of water. The ice had melted.

‘As Hakan has already told you, rumours about a Swedish spy had been circulating for a while,’ said Talboth. ‘The CIA had known about it for ages. When I worked at the Stockholm embassy, we put a lot of resources into trying to solve this problem. The fact that somebody was selling Swedish military secrets to the Russians was a problem for us and for NATO. Sweden’s arms industry was at the cutting edge when it came to technical innovations. We used to have regular meetings with our Swedish colleagues about this worrying situation. And with colleagues from England, France and Norway, among others. We were faced with an incredibly skilful agent. We also realised that there must be an intermediary, an “informer”, in Sweden. Somebody passing on information to the agent, who in turn sent it on to Russia. We were surprised that we - or rather, our Swedish colleagues - could never find any clues as to who it was. The Swedes had a shortlist of twenty names, all of them officers in one service or another. But the Swedish investigators got nowhere. And we didn’t manage to help them either. It was as if we were hunting a phantom. Some genius hit on the idea of calling the person we were looking for “Diana”. Like the Phantom’s girlfriend. I thought it was idiotic. Mainly because there was nothing to suggest that a woman was involved. But it would eventually transpire that the nitwit responsible had unknowingly but devastatingly stumbled onto something very relevant. In any case, that was the situation until late March 1987. The eighteenth, to be precise. Something happened on that day that changed the whole situation, sent several Swedish intelligence officers out into the cold, and forced us all to start thinking differently. Has Hakan told you about this?’

‘No.’

‘It began outside Amsterdam at Schiphol, the big airport, early in the morning. A man appeared outside the airport police’s office. He was wearing a baggy suit, a white shirt and a tie. He was carrying a small suitcase in one hand and had an overcoat over his arm and a hat in his other hand. He must have given the impression of coming from another age, as if he had climbed out of a black-and-white film with sombre background music. He spoke to a police officer who was really far too young for the job, but there was a flu epidemic and he was filling in. The man spoke bad English and announced that he was seeking political asylum in the Netherlands. He produced a Russian passport in the name of Oleg Linde. An unusual surname for a Russian, you might think, but it was correct. He was in his forties, with thinning hair and a scar along one side of his nose. The young police officer, who had never set eyes on a defector from the East before, called in an older colleague who took over. I think his name was Geert, but before he had a chance to ask his first question, Linde began talking. I’ve listened to the interrogation so many times that I know the most important parts almost by heart. He was a colonel in the KGB, the division dealing with espionage in the West, and was seeking political asylum because he no longer wanted to do work that was propping up the crumbling Soviet empire. Those were his first words. Then he came out with the bait he had prepared in advance. He knew about many of the Soviet spies working in the West, especially a number of very competent agents based in the Netherlands. After that he was handed over to the security services. They took him to an apartment in The Hague, ironically enough not far from the International Court of Justice, where he was interrogated. It didn’t take long for Sapo to realise that Oleg Linde was completely genuine. They kept his identity secret, but they immediately began informing colleagues all over the world that they had come across a marvellious “antique”, which was now standing on a table in front of them. Would they like to come and take a look? To examine it? Reports came in from Moscow to the effect that the KGB was in an uproar; everybody was scuttling around like ants in an anthill poked with a walking stick. Oleg Linde was one of those people who simply couldn’t be allowed to go missing. But missing he was. He’d disappeared without a trace, and they feared the worst. Moscow figured out that he must be in the Netherlands when their spy network there collapsed. He had begun his big “clearance sale”, as we called it. And he was cheap. All he wanted was a new name and a new identity. According to what I’ve heard, he moved to Mauritius and settled in a town with the wonderful name of Pamplemousse, where he earned a living as a cabinetmaker. Evidently Linde had a background as a joiner before he joined the KGB, but I’m not sure about that part of the story.’

‘What’s he doing now?’

‘He’s sleeping the eternal sleep. He died in 2006. Cancer. He met a young lady in Mauritius and married her, and they had several children. But I don’t know anything about their lives. His story is reminiscent of that of another defector, an agent known as “Boris”.’

‘I’ve heard of him,’ said Wallander. ‘There must have been a constant procession of Russian defectors at that time.’

Talboth stood up and went indoors. Down in the street below, several fire engines raced past, sirens wailing. Talboth came back with the jug full to the brim with iced water.

‘He was the one who informed us that the spy we’d been looking for in Sweden was a woman,’ he said when he had sat down again. ‘He didn’t know her name; she was overseen by a group within the KGB that worked independently of the other officers - that was normal practice with especially valuable agents. But he was certain that it was a woman. She didn’t work in the military or in the arms industry, which meant that she had at least one, possibly several, informers who provided her with information that she sold. It was never clear whether she was a spy for ideological reasons or if she did it purely as a business venture. The intelligence services always prefer spies who operate as a business. If there is too much idealism involved, the operation can easily go off the rails. We always think that agents with great faith in the cause are never entirely reliable. We are a cynical bunch, and we have to be in order to do our job properly. We repeat the mantra that we might not make the world any better, but at least we don’t make it any worse. We justify our existence by claiming that we maintain a sort of balance of terror, which we probably do.’

Talboth stirred the ice cubes in the jug with a spoon.

‘Future wars,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘will be over staples such as water. Our soldiers will fight to the death over pools of water.’

He filled his glass, being careful not to spill any water. Wallander waited.

‘We never found her,’ Talboth continued. ‘We helped the Swedes as much as we could, but she was never identified, never exposed and arrested. We started talking about the possibility that she didn’t exist. But the Russians were constantly finding out about things they shouldn’t have. If Bofors made some technical advance in a weapons system, the Russians soon knew all about it. We set endless traps, but we never caught anybody.’