The Troubled Man (22 page)

He took out the file again and examined the names once more, wondering if they were people involved somehow or other in the battle against the intruders, or if they were suspects. And if so, suspected of what?

He took a deep breath.
Hakan von Enke had been on the trail of a Russian spy
. Somebody who had given the Russian submarines sufficient information for them to fool their pursuers, even to dictate what weaponry they would need. Somebody who was still out there, who still hadn’t been exposed. That was the person from whom von Enke had concealed his notes, the person he was afraid of.

The man outside the fence in Djursholm, Wallander thought. Was that someone who didn’t like the idea of Hakan von Enke hunting down a spy?

Wallander adjusted the floor lamp next to the sofa and worked his way through the thick file yet again. He paused every time he came to notes that could possibly indicate traces of a spy. Perhaps that was also the answer to another question, the feeling that somebody had removed documents from the archive in von Enke’s study. The person responsible for removing the papers was probably Hakan von Enke himself. It was all like some sort of Russian nesting doll. He had not only hidden his notes, but he had also hidden from outsiders what they actually meant. He had laid a smokescreen. Or perhaps rather a minefield that could be activated whenever he wanted, if he noticed that someone was getting close to him, someone who had no business being there.

Wallander eventually turned off the light and went to bed. But he couldn’t get to sleep. On a sudden impulse, he got up, dressed and went out. Earlier in his life when he was feeling especially lonely he had tried to improve the situation by going for long nocturnal walks. There wasn’t a single street in Ystad that he hadn’t become familiar with. Now he walked along Strandvagen and then turned left towards the bridge to Djurgarden. It was a warm summer night and there were still people out and about, many of them drunk and boisterous. Wallander felt like a furtive stranger as he wandered through the shadows. He continued past the amusement park at Grona Lund, and didn’t turn back until he came to the Thielska art gallery. He wasn’t thinking about anything in particular, just strolling around in the night instead of sleeping. When he arrived back at the apartment he fell asleep right away; his excursion had achieved its desired effect.

The following day he drove home. He was back in Skane by mid-afternoon and stopped to stock up on provisions before tackling the final stretch and picking up Jussi, who was overjoyed to see him and left muddy paw prints on his clothes. After eating and sleeping for an hour or two, he sat down at the kitchen table with the file in front of him. He had taken out his strongest magnifying glass. His father had given it to him many years ago, when he had displayed a sudden interest in tiny insects crawling around in the grass. It was one of the few presents he had ever received, apart from the dog, Saga, and he treasured it. Now he used it to examine the photographs between the black covers, leaving the texts and margin notes in peace for a change.

One of the photos seemed to stick out like a sore thumb. It hadn’t occurred to him before, but there was something too
civilian
about the picture. He was quite sure that nothing in the book was there by accident. Hakan von Enke was a careful and very dedicated hunter.

The photo, which was in black and white, had been taken at some sort of harbour. In the background was a building with no windows, presumably a warehouse. With the aid of the magnifying glass, Wallander was able to make out two trucks and some stacks of fish crates in a blurred area at the edge of the picture. The photographer had aimed the camera at two men standing by a fishing boat, an old-fashioned trawler. One of the men was old, the other very young, no more than a boy. Wallander guessed that the picture had been taken sometime in the sixties. The fashion was still wool sweaters and leather jackets, sou’westers and oilskins. The boat was white, and scraped up. Behind and between the older man’s legs Wallander could just make out the registration plate. The last letter was
G
. The first letter was almost completely hidden, but the middle one could be an
R
or a
T
. The numbers were easier to read:
123
. Wallander sat down at his computer and googled various search words in an attempt to find out where the trawler was registered. He soon established that there was only one possibility: the combination of letters had to be
NRG
. The trawler was based on the east coast, in the neighbourhood of Norrkoping. After a little more searching Wallander found the home pages of the National Administration of Shipping and Navigation and the National Board of Fisheries. He noted down the phone numbers on a scrap of paper and returned to the kitchen table. The phone rang. It was Linda, wondering why he hadn’t been in touch.

‘You just vanished into thin air,’ she said. ‘I think we have enough missing persons to contend with.’

‘You don’t have to worry about me,’ said Wallander. ‘I came home an hour or so ago. I was planning to call you tomorrow.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘now! I - not to mention Hans - want to know what you’ve found out.’

‘Is he at home?’

‘He’s at work. I told him off this morning because he’s never here. I tried to hammer it into him that one of these days I’ll start working again. What will happen then?’

‘Well, what will happen?’

‘He’ll have to help. Anyway, tell me all about it.’

Wallander started to describe his visit to Signe, the lonely, hunched-up creature with the blonde hair, but before he had hit his stride, Klara started crying and Linda was forced to hang up. He promised to call her the following day.

The first thing he did when he arrived at the police station the next morning was to find Martinsson and figure out whether or not he would be on duty over the midsummer holiday. Martinsson was, of all his colleagues, best acquainted with the constantly changing work schedule, and he was able to answer within a couple of minutes. Despite so many officers being on leave, Wallander would not be required to work over Midsummer. As for Martinsson, he had arranged to take his youngest daughter to a yoga camp in Denmark.

‘I don’t really know what it involves,’ he said, trying to hide his concern. ‘Is it normal for a thirteen-year-old to be so crazy about yoga?’

‘Better that than a lot of other things.’

‘My two older children were into horses. Much less stressful. But this girl is different.’

‘We’re all different,’ said Wallander mysteriously, and left the room.

He dialled the number he had tracked down the previous evening and soon discovered that NRG123 belonged to a fisherman by the name of Eskil Lundberg on Boko in the Gryt southern archipelago. He made another call and, when an answering machine came on, he left a message saying it was urgent.

Then he called Linda and finished the conversation they had begun the previous evening. She had spoken to Hans, and as soon as possible they would go visit Signe. Wallander wasn’t surprised, but he wondered if they really understood what was in store for them. What had he himself expected to find?

‘We’ve decided to celebrate midsummer,’ she said. ‘In spite of everything that’s happened, and all the anguish over his parents’ disappearance. We thought we’d cheer you up by coming to visit you.’

‘By all means,’ said Wallander. ‘I’m looking forward to it. What a nice surprise!’

He got a cup of coffee from the machine, which was actually working for once, and exchanged a few words with one of the forensic officers who had spent the night in a swamp where a confused woman appeared to have committed suicide. When the officer eventually arrived home at dawn, he had produced a frog from one of the many pockets in his uniform. His wife had been less than overjoyed.

Wallander returned to his office and managed to find yet another number in his overloaded address book. It was the last call he planned to make that morning before abandoning the missing von Enkes and returning to his routine police work. Earlier he had left a message on an answering machine. Now he was about to dial the mobile phone number of that same person. This time he got through.

‘Hans-Olov.’

Wallander recognised the almost childish voice of the young professor of geology he had met in the course of duty several years ago. He could hear an announcement in the background about a flight departure.

‘Wallander here. I gather you’re at an airport?’

‘Yes, Kastrup. I’m on my way back home after a geology congress in Chile, but my suitcase seems to have been lost.’

‘I need your help,’ said Wallander. ‘I’d like you to compare some stones.’

‘Sure. But can it wait until tomorrow? I’m always a wreck after a long flight.’

Wallander remembered that Uddmark had no less than five children, despite his youth.

‘I hope your presents for the children weren’t in the missing bag.’

‘It’s worse than that. It contains some beautiful stones I brought home with me.’

‘Is your office address the same as it was the last time we worked together? If it is I can send you the stones later today.’

‘What do you want me to do with them, apart from establishing what kind of rock they are?’

‘I want to know if any of them might have originated in the USA.’

‘Can you be more precise?’

‘In the vicinity of San Diego in California, or somewhere on the east coast, near Boston.’

‘I’ll see what I can do, but it sounds difficult. Do you have any idea how many different species of rock there are?’

Wallander told him that he didn’t know, sympathised with him once again about the missing suitcase, hung up and then hurried to join a meeting he should have been at. Someone had left a note on his desk saying it was important. He was the last person to enter the conference room, where the window was wide open because the forecast said it was going to be a hot day. He couldn’t help thinking about all the times he had been in charge of these kinds of meetings. During all the years when it had been his responsibility, he had often dreamed of the day when the burden would no longer be on his shoulders. But now, when it was often somebody else in charge of investigations, he sometimes missed not being the driving force sorting through proposals and telling people what to do.

The man in charge today was a detective by the name of Ove Sunde. He had arrived in Ystad only the previous year, from Vaxjo. Somebody had whispered in Wallander’s ear that a messy divorce and a less than successful investigation that led to a heated debate in the local newspaper,
Smalandsposten
, had induced him to request a transfer. He came from Gothenburg originally, and never made any attempt to disguise his dialect. Sunde was considered to be competent, but a bit on the lazy side. Another rumour suggested that he had found a new companion in Ystad, a woman young enough to be his daughter. Wallander distrusted men his own age who chased after women far too young for them. It rarely ended happily, but often led to new, heart-rending divorces.

It was doubtful, though, that his own constant loneliness was a better alternative.

Sunde began his presentation. It was about the case of the woman in the swamp, which was probably not just a suicide but also a murder. Her husband was found lying dead in their home in a little village not far from Marsvinsholm. The situation was complicated by the fact that a few days earlier the man had gone to the police station in Ystad and said that he thought his wife was planning to kill him. The officer who spoke to him hadn’t taken him seriously because the man seemed confused and made a lot of contradictory claims. They needed to work out as quickly as possible what had actually happened, before the media caught on to the fact that the man’s complaint had been shelved. Wallander was annoyed by Sunde’s excessively officious tone. He considered this fear of the opinion of the mass media sheer cowardice. If a mistake was made, it should be acknowledged and the consequences accepted.

He thought he should point that out, calmly and objectively, firmly but without losing his temper. But he said nothing. Martinsson was sitting at the other side of the table, watching him. He knows exactly what’s going on inside my head at the moment, Wallander thought, and he agrees with me, whether I speak up now or hold my tongue.

After the meeting they drove out to the house where the dead man had been found. With photographs in their hands and plastic bags over their shoes, he and Martinsson went from room to room in the company of a forensic officer. Wallander suddenly experienced deja vu, feeling like he had already visited this house at some point in the past and made an ‘ocular inspection’ (as Lennart Mattson would no doubt have described it) of the crime scene. He hadn’t, of course; it was simply that he had done the same thing so many times before. A few years ago he bought a book about a crime committed on the island of Varmdo off Stockholm in the early nineteenth century. As he read it, he became increasingly involved, and had the distinct feeling that he could have entered the story and together with the county sheriff and prosecutor worked out how the victims, man and wife, had been murdered. People have always been the same, and the most common crimes are more or less repeats of what happened in earlier times. They are nearly always due to arguments about money, or jealousy, sometimes revenge. Before him, generations of police officers, sheriffs and prosecutors had made the same observations. Nowadays they had superior technical means of establishing evidence, but the ability to interpret what you see with your own eyes was still the key to police work.