The Dogs of Riga - Wallander 02

by Henning Mankell

  Baiba had been brought to her senses again by the cold of the morning. They paused at a street corner, and Wallander knew he had to think of something.

  "Do you know anybody who has a car we could borrow?" he asked.

  She thought for a while, then shook her head.

  His fear suddenly made him feel annoyed. Why was everything so difficult in this country? How would he be able to help her when nothing was normal, nothing was like he was used to?

  Then he remembered the car he had stolen the previous day. The chances of it still being where he had left it were small, but it seemed to him that he had nothing to lose by going to find out. They came to a cafe that had opened early, and he hustled Baiba inside, thinking how that would confuse the pack of dogs behind them. They would have to split into two groups, and they must be constantly on their guard in case he and Baiba had already found the proof. That thought put Wallander in a much better mood. There was a possibility he hadn't thought of before. He might be able to lay false trails for their pursuers. He hurried along the street. First of all he must establish if the car was still there.

  It was still where he had left it. Without a pause for thought he climbed in behind the wheel, noticing again the smell of fish, joined the electric cables, this time remembering to put the gear lever in neutral first. He pulled up outside the cafe* and left the engine running while he went in to fetch Baiba. She was sitting at a table over a cup of tea, and it occurred to him that he was also hungry, but that would have to wait. She had already paid, and they went straight out to the car.

  "How did you manage to get the car?" she asked.

  "I'll explain another time," he said. "For the moment just tell me how to get out of Riga."

  "Where are we going?"

  "I don't know yet. To start with, just let's get out into the country."

  There was more traffic on the roads now, and Wallander moaned and groaned about the lack of power in the engine, but at last they reached the outskirts of the city and were in flat countryside with farms here and there among the fields.

  "Where does this lead to?" Wallander asked. "Estonia. It ends up in Tallinn." "We're not going that far."

  The pointer on the petrol gauge had started jerking up and down, and he turned into a petrol station. An old man, blind in one eye, filled the tank, and when Wallander came to pay, he found he didn't have enough money. Baiba was able to make up the difference, and they drove off. Wallander had been keeping his eye on the road, and noticed a black car of a make he didn't recognise pass by, followed closely by another. As they emerged from the petrol station, he had glanced in the rear-view mirror and seen another car parked on the hard shoulder behind them. So, three of them, he thought. At least three cars, maybe more.

  They came to a town whose name Wallander never discovered. He stopped the car in a square where a group of people were gathered round a stall selling fish. He was very tired. If he didn't get some sleep soon, his brain would no longer function. He noticed a hotel sign on the far side of the square, and made up his mind on the spot.

  "I have to get some sleep," he said to Baiba. "How much money have you got on you? Enough for a room?"

  She nodded. They left the car where it was, crossed the square and checked into the little hotel. Baiba said something in Latvian that made the girl at the reception desk blush, but she didn't ask them to fill in any registration forms.

  "What did you tell her?" Wallander asked when they were safely inside their room overlooking a courtyard.

  "The truth," she said. "That we are not married and are only going to stay for a few hours."

  "She blushed, didn't she? Did you see her blush?"

  "I would have done as well."

  Just for a moment the tension was relieved. Wallander burst out laughing and Baiba blushed. Then he turned serious again.

  "I don't know if you realise, but this is the maddest escapade I've ever been involved in," he said. "Nor do I know if you realise I'm at least as scared as you are. Unlike your husband I'm a police officer who has spent the whole of his life working in a town not much bigger than the one we're in now. I have no experience of complicated criminal networks and police massacres. Now and then I have to solve a murder, of course, but I spend most of my time chasing drunken burglars and escaped bulls."

  She sat beside him on the edge of the bed.

  "Karlis said you were a good police officer," she said. "He said you had made a careless mistake, but nevertheless you were a good police officer."

  Wallander reluctantly recalled the life-raft.

  "Our two countries are so different," he said. "Karlis and I had completely different starting points for the work we had to do. He would no doubt have been able to operate in Sweden as well, but I could never be a police officer in Latvia."

  "That's exactly what you are now," she said.

  "No," he objected. "I'm here because you asked me to come. Maybe I'm here because Karlis was who he was. I don't actually know what I'm doing here in Latvia. There's only one thing I do know for certain, and that's that I want you to come back to Sweden with me. When all this is over."

  She looked at him in astonishment. "Why?" she asked.

  He realised he wouldn't be able to explain it to her, as his own feelings were so contradictory and uncertain.

  "Never mind," he said. "Forget it. I have to get some sleep now if I'm going to be able to think clearly. You also need some rest. Maybe it's best if you ask the receptionist to knock on the door in three hours."

  "The girl will start blushing again," Baiba said as she got up from the bed.

  Wallander curled up under the quilt. He was already asleep when Baiba came back from reception.

  When he woke up three hours later, it felt as if he'd only been asleep for a couple of minutes. The knocking on the door had not disturbed Baiba, who was still sleeping. Wallander forced himself to take a cold shower in order to drive the tiredness from his body. When he'd finished dressing, he thought he'd let her go on sleeping until he had worked out what they were going to do next. He wrote her a message, saying that she should wait for him to come back, that he wouldn't be long.

  The girl in reception smiled hesitantly at him, and Wallander thought that there was a trace of sensuousness in her eye. She turned out to understand a little English, and when he asked where he could get a bite to eat she pointed to the door of a little dining room that formed part of the hotel. He sat down at a table with a view of the square. People were still crowded around the fish stall, bundled up against the cold morning. The car was where Wallander had left it.

  On the other side of the square was one of the black cars he had seen pass by the petrol station. He hoped the dogs were freezing as they sat on guard in their cars. The girl in reception also acted as waitress, and came in with a plate of sandwiches and a pot of coffee. He kept glancing out at the square as he ate, and all the time he was working out a plan of action. It was so outrageous, it might just have a chance of succeeding.

  When he had finished eating he felt better. He returned to the room and found Baiba awake. He sat down on the bed and began to explain what he had decided to do.

  "Karlis must have had somebody he trusted among his colleagues," he said.

  "We never socialised with other police officers," she said. "We had friends from different circles."

  "Think hard," he urged her. "There must have been somebody he had coffee with now and then. It doesn't need to have been a friend. It'll be enough if you can remember somebody who wasn't his enemy."

  She tried to think, and he gave her time. His plan depended on the major having had somebody he might not have trusted, exactly, but didn't distrust.

  "He sometimes mentioned Mikelis," she said, still thinking hard. "A young sergeant who wasn't like the rest of them. But I don't know anything about him."

  "You must know something, surely? Why did Karlis talk about him?"

  She had propped the pillow up against the wall, and he could see s
he was doing her best to remember.

  "Karlis used to go on about how horrified he was by his colleagues' nonchalance," she began. "Their cold-blooded reaction to any kind of suffering. Mikelis was an exception. I think he and Karlis had once been delegated to arrest a poor man with a large family, and afterwards, he'd said to Karlis that he thought it was awful. Maybe Karlis mentioned him in some other context as well, but I don't remember."

  "When was that?"

  "Quite recently."

  "Try and be more precise. A year ago? More?" "Less. It can't have been as long as a year ago." "Mikelis must have been working with the serious crimes squad if he was working together with Karlis?" "I've no idea."

  "He must have been. You must phone Mikelis and tell him you need to talk to him."

  She stared at him in horror. "He'll have me arrested."

  "Don't tell him you're Baiba Liepa. Just say you've something to tell him that could be useful for his career prospects, but you must be granted anonymity."

  "It's not easy to fool the police in this country."

  "You have to sound convincing. You mustn't give up"

  "But what should I say?"

  "I don't know. You'll have to help me to work something out. What is the biggest temptation a Latvian police officer can be confronted with?"

  "Money."

  "Foreign currency?"

  "A lot of people in my country would sell their own mother for American dollars."

  "You must tell him you know some people who have lots of American dollars."

  "He'll ask where it all comes from."

  Wallander thought for a moment, and remembered something that had happened recendy in Sweden.

  "You must phone Mikelis and tell him you know two Latvians who have robbed a bank in Stockholm and acquired a large amount of foreign currency, mainly American dollars. They raided an exchange bureau at the central station in Stockholm, and the Swedish police never managed to solve the crime. The two robbers are back here in Latvia now, and they have all the foreign currency with them. That's what you must say."

  "He'll ask who I am and how I know about it."

  "Give him the impression you've been the girlfriend of one of the men, but that he's jilted you. You want revenge, but you're afraid of them and don't dare to give your name."

  "I'm so bad at lying."

  He was suddenly angry.

  "Then you'd better learn. Right now. This Mikelis is our only hope of getting into the archives. I have a plan, and it might just work. If you can't think of any suggestions, then I have to."

  He got up from the bed. "We're going back to Riga now, I'll tell you all about it in the car."

  "Do you mean Mikelis is going to look for Karlis's papers?"

  "No, not Mikelis," he replied solemnly. "I'll do that. But Mikelis has to let me into the police headquarters."

  *

  They had returned to Riga and Baiba had telephoned from a post office, and managed to lie successfully. Then they'd gone to the indoor market. Baiba had told him to wait in the big hangar-like hall where they sold fish. He watched her disappear into the throng, and he knew he might never see her again. She returned however, having met Mikelis in the meat section. They had wandered from stall to stall, examining the meat and talking. She told him there were no bank robbers in fact, and no American dollars. During the drive back to Riga Wallander had told her not to hesitate but to jump in with both feet and tell him the whole story. There was no other option. It was all or nothing.

  "He'll either arrest you," he'd told her, "or he'll play along with us. If you start hesitating, he might suspect it's a plot against him, maybe something being tried on by one of his superiors who is testing his loyalty. You must be able to prove that you are Karlis's widow if he doesn't recognise your face. You must say and do exacdy what I've told you."

  A good hour later Baiba returned to where Wallander was waiting. He could see straight away that she had pulled it off. Her face radiated happiness. He was reminded again how beautiful she was.

  She reported in a low voice that Mikelis had been very scared. His whole career as a police officer was on the line. He might even be risking his life. Nevertheless, she suspected he was also feeling relief.

  "He's one of us," she said. "Karlis was not mistaken."

  There were still some hours to go before Wallander could put his plan into operation, and to fill in the time they wandered through the city, fixed two alternative meeting places, and then continued to the university where she worked. In a deserted biology lecture room smelling of ether, Wallander fell asleep with his head resting on a showcase containing the skeleton of a seagull. Baiba curled up on a broad window ledge, contemplating the park outside. There was nothing to do but wait, silent and exhausted.

  Shortly before 8 p.m. they parted outside the biology theatre. A caretaker was doing his rounds, checking that lights were switched off" and doors locked, and Baiba talked him into switching off the light above one of the back doors for a moment.

  When the light went out, Wallander slipped out the door, ran through the grounds in the direction Baiba had indicated, and when he paused to catch his breath he was sure the pack was still gathered round the university building.

  The moment the clock in the church tower behind the police headquarters struck 9 p.m., Wallander walked in through the well-lit doors and into the section of the fortress that was accessible to the public. Baiba had described in detail what Mikelis looked like, and the only thing that surprised Wallander when he found him was how young he was. Mikelis was waiting behind a desk, and Wallander wondered how on earth he had explained away his presence there. In a loud, shrill voice he protested in English about having been mugged in the street. The bastards had not only taken his money, but they'd also stolen his holy of holies, his passport.

  For one desperate moment it struck him that he might have made a fatal error. He'd forgotten to tell Baiba to find out if Mikelis spoke English. What if he only spoke Latvian? He could hardly avoid bringing in somebody who did speak English, and then Wallander would really be on the spot.

  To his relief Mikelis did speak a litde English, better than the major in fact, and when one of the other duty officers came over to the desk to see if he could take this troublesome Englishman off Mikelis's hands, he was sent packing. Mikelis ushered Wallander into an adjacent room. The other officers displayed some curious interest, but hardly of the kind that suggested that they were suspicious and about to sound the alarm.

  The interrogation room was bare and cold. Wallander sat down on a chair, and Mikelis observed him unsmilingly.

  "At 10 p.m. the night shift will take over," said Mikelis. "By then I ought to have filled in a report form on the assault. I'll send out a car to search for some suspects whose appearance we can invent. We have exactly one hour."

  As Wallander had expected, Mikelis told him that the archives were huge. He would have no chance of going through even a tiny portion of all the shelves in the caverns built into the rock under the police headquarters. If Baiba was wrong and Karlis hadn't in fact hidden his testimony close to the file bearing her own name, they were lost.

  Mikelis drew a map for Wallander, who would have to negotiate three locked doors on his way to the archives. Mikelis would give him the keys. On the bottom floor, the basement archive, there would be a guard posted on the final door. Mikelis would lure him away with a telephone call at precisely 10.30 p.m. One hour later, at 11.30 p.m., Mikelis would go to the basement and take the guard away with him in order to help him with some task he would invent. That was when Wallander would have to leave the archive. After that, he was on his own. If he should come up against any duty officer in the corridors who became suspicious, Wallander would have to sort things out for himself.

  Could he rely on Mikelis? Wallander asked himself that question, and decided the answer was irrelevant. He had no choice but to trust him. There was no alternative. He knew what he'd instructed Baiba to say to the young sergeant,
but he had no idea what else she'd told him, he only knew it was then that Mikelis had been convinced he should help Wallander get into the archives. No matter what he did, he would have no control over what was happening round about him.

  After half an hour Mikelis left the interrogation room to arrange for a patrol car to be sent out with instructions to look out for any persons answering the description of the muggers who had attacked Mr Stevens, the English tourist. Mikelis had written out some descriptions that could well have applied to most of the citizens of Riga, and Wallander noticed that one of the descriptions could easily have been of Mikelis himself. The attack was assumed to have taken place near the Esplanade, but Mr Stevens was still too upset to be able to go with the car and point out the exact spot. When Mikelis returned they went over the map of the route to the archives once again. Wallander noticed he would have to pass by the corridor where the colonels had their offices, and where he himself had also had a room. The very thought made him shudder. Even if one of them is in his office, he thought, I can't know whether he was the one who ordered Sergeant Zids to butcher Inese and her friends. Was it Putnis, or Murniers? Which of them has sent out his dogs to hunt down the people who are searching for the major's testimony?

  When it was time for the night shift to take over, Wallander noticed that all the tension had affected his stomach. He badly needed to go to the lavatory, but knew there was no time for that. Mikelis opened the door into the corridor, then gave Wallander the order to go. He had memorised the map and knew he couldn't afford to get lost - if he did, he would never reach the last door in time for Mikelis's call that would distract the guard.

  The building was deserted. He hastened along the lengthy corridors as quiedy as he could, afraid that any moment a door would be flung open and a gun pointed at him. He counted the staircases as he passed them, heard the sound of footsteps echoing down a distant corridor, and had the feeling of being in the middle of a labyrinth where one could get lost all too easily. He started down the stairs, wondering how far below street level the archives actually were. At last he got very close to the place where the guard would be on duty, glanced at his watch and saw that Mikelis's phone call was due in only a couple of minutes. He stood motionless, listening. The silence unnerved him. Had he taken a wrong turning despite everything? * The shrill sound of the telephone ringing suddenly pierced the silence, and Wallander could start breathing again. He heard footsteps in the adjacent corridor, and when they died away he moved forward, came to the archive door and opened it with the two keys Mikelis had given him.