The Dogs of Riga - Wallander 02

by Henning Mankell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "So Baiba hasn't found the papers?"

  "Not yet."

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

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

  "How will I be able to do that?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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